Persepolis in Hindi: Iran’s graphic novel has new lessons for India


In almost all of the interviews she gave, Marjane Satrapi refused to label her 2000 book Persepolis as a graphic novel. Call it a comic, she said. It sounds more fun.

She also doesn’t like to call it an autobiography. Even though this is the intensely personal story of a young girl named Marji in Tehran, experiencing the Islamic revolution of the 1970s and the oppressive authoritarianism that followed. “I’m using myself to tell a story that’s bigger than me,” she said, speaking at the virtual launch of a Hindi translation of Persepolis by Vani Prakashan earlier this week. “It’s a story of dictatorship, no matter where it takes place.”

History has been a publishing phenomenon that has left a trail of footnotes in its wake. The book and its 2004 sequel, Persepolis 2 (about Marji adjusting to a new life in Austria as a teenager, an age at which Satrapi moved to that country to study) was published in an omnibus edition in English. in 2007. The film version of Persepolis was nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature that same year. Over 2 million copies of the books have been sold in 29 languages ​​since.

Whichever edition you choose, Persepolis is funny, tragic, intimate, and filled with rebellions big and small. Marji’s grandmother, in the darkest moments, fills her bra with jasmine blossoms to keep it fresh. The family hold soldiers at the door as they run upstairs to pour all the wine down the toilet rather than hand it over. His parents, on a trip to Turkey, smuggled posters of Iron Maiden and Kim Wilde in the lining of their overcoats. Little Marji herself deceives the authorities when they discover her pin featuring Michael Jackson. “No, it’s Malcolm X, the leader of the Black Muslims in America!

Satrapi knew the story couldn’t be told without humor. His original drafts, written in fits of rage, were unusable. “With distance comes humor,” she says. “When it’s bearable, you complain; when it’s unbearable, either you try to kill yourself or you laugh.

It has been 20 years since Persepolis was originally published in French. But for the 51-year-old man who now lives in Paris, there is still cause for rebellion. All over the world, authoritarianism has continued to intensify. More and more restrictions are being enforced online, in the press, in court, in the arts and in public life. The Freedom in the World report, an independent country-based assessment of political rights and civil liberties, lowered the scores of more than 73 countries for 2021 (including the United States, Singapore and Spain). India’s score, out of a total of 100 points, fell from 75 in 2018 to 67. Satrapi’s homeland Iran scored 16.

The Persepolis books ignited the very genre of graphic memory, inspiring writer-artists to document their own childhoods in conflict zones as far apart as Côte d’Ivoire and Argentina. (Sony Pictures Classics)

Persepolis, the book and the film, have been banned in several areas, including Iran, Lebanon, and, for a time, Chicago public schools. But censorship news invariably makes a book even more popular, and Satrapi revel in the rattling cages. “If you want to go anywhere in the world you have to behave a little bit badly,” she says.

Despite the bans, like a poster hidden in the lining of a coat, the story of Persepolis slipped before the censors. Books ignited the very genre of graphic memory, inspiring writer-artists to document their own childhood in conflict zones as far apart as Côte d’Ivoire and Argentina (see box). In 2009, Iranian activists replaced Satrapi’s original drawings with updated text, creating Persepolis 2.0, an online initiative that helped amplify public despair over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“A lot of people have found it to be part of their own life which is extremely magical for me because it was a very, very personal story from the start,” she said in a 2008 interview with ABC. on the translation of the work into English. “If they can understand a story like that, it means that everything is fine, that there is hope for the future, that we don’t necessarily need to go to war.

Instead, she did more books. Poulet aux prunes (2004) celebrates the last days of Satrapi’s great-uncle, a famous musician who one day discovers that his instrument, the tar, is irreparably damaged, and plans to end his life. Embroidery, her 2003 comic, follows an evening of tea and gossip and examines sexual politics in Iran after the revolution (the title is a colloquial term for sewing female genitalia to simulate virginity).

It’s another small fight in a long line of rebellions. Although Satrapi, in his interview with ABC, again refuses to be cataloged. “I don’t consider myself a rebel. I just say what I think.

Persepolis, the book and the film, have been banned in several areas, including Iran, Lebanon, and, for a time, Chicago public schools.  (Sony Pictures Classics)
Persepolis, the book and the film, have been banned in several areas, including Iran, Lebanon, and, for a time, Chicago public schools. (Sony Pictures Classics)

Post-Persepolis: graphic novels to read next

Nylon Route (2006): Parsua Bashi adds a touch of A Christmas Carol magic to her memories of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. As an adult in Switzerland, she imagines childhood versions of herself through her graphic memories, linking past, present, Farsi and German public history and private memory. It’s funny and dark in places, like Persepolis.

Aya from Yop Town (2005): Written (and loosely inspired by the life of) Marguerite Abouet, who grew up in Ivory Coast in the 1970s, and illustrated by her husband Clément Oubrerie,… Yop City follows the often funny daily adventures of a teenage girl named Aya. It’s a refreshing look at an African nation that typically makes the headlines of famine and civil war. A film adaptation was released in 2013.

Exit injuries (2007): For those who loved Joe Sacco’s Palestine, Israeli illustrator Rutu Modan’s view of Tel Aviv is slower but just as haunting. The father of a young taxi driver is missing. The man believes his father was killed in a bomb blast and begins searching for clues, revealing a side of his relative he didn’t know existed. Modan’s take on the uncertainty of life makes it an evocative tale on the road.

I remember Beirut (2008): Zeina Abirached grew up watching Christians and Muslims fight in the streets of Lebanon. His collection of stories, however, illustrates everyday life: Kit-Kat bars as a treat, his brother collecting shrapnel as a hobby, power outages, fuel shortages. It is a complementary work to his award-winning graphic novel A Game for Swallows, recounting the war in Lebanon.

Tropical Virus (2009): Power Paola’s story of her childhood in Ecuador feels at times like a television novel: she is the youngest girl who struggles to establish her identity in a family of conservative women. His father, a priest, left the clergy, divorced his wife and then left the family as well. Her humor is often self-deprecating while Paola also takes a critical look at herself as a young woman.


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