Skip to main content

Book Review: The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis (I & II) is a non-fiction comical book based on the author’s life spent in Iran and in some European countries. According to the time spells, the book has been segmented into two parts. First part is called ‘The Story of Childhood’, and the second one’ The Story of a Return’. Both the segments are interlinked, and to understand the second one, you should have gone through the first part – that is imperative.


The time period of the book starts from 1970s to 2000. Most of the events are from Iran. Marjane Satrapi is a Persian living a better off life with family in Iran. Well, in 1980s things begin to change as the country gets into the grip of Islamic Revolution. It means thing will be done or decided within the conformity of religion. Shah regime is brutal. Once a free Iran now imposes cultural and traditions to mainly save the country from the Western influence. Earlier people there were free to listen to music, drink wine and beer, and could party, but since the arrival of Shah regime, people cannot do all these things. This regime underpins the communism and brings Islamic law for the country. Other people, mainly Muslim population finds it easy to fit in their lives, but for those who are non-Muslims and literate find it a blow on their freedom. People falling off the line are being checked and executed by the Guardians of the Revolution. Though she was caught by them many times, but every time she either came up with plausible excuses or bribed them.    

As the events turn from bad to worse, the girl Marjane turns rebellious. In school, she hits the principal. Her family unable to cope up with her rebellious steaks sends her to Venice for education. There she sees other dark aspects of life, it too was complicated, and it mentally kept disturbing her.

The book also discusses about the Gulf war that took place between Iraq and Iran. The war was useless, since most of the population of Iran was illiterate; government used religious methods to get them enrolled in the army. Youth joined and died, up to one million. The futility of the war was another jolt to Marjane’s mental abilities and family. When the jet fighters bombed the streets, Marjane sees the mutilated body parts of her friend who was living next to her home.     

Even when she returns home from Europe, things did not change. Her parents then say that Iran is not a country for you. The book chronicles the events as she grows from teenager to adolescent. The atrocities of the war have been presented in a very simple and lucid way through this comical book, if not in a comic style then otherwise it would have been a different story to tell and grasp. How simple and carefree lives of people are torn apart by the imposing of fundamentalism and wars. The book gains international sympathy from the readers, the fate of war-related books is that they are warmly accepted by the readers and their stories stick to them for longer time.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
63 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more