| Marjane
Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, on the edge of the Caspian
Sea. Part Azerbaijani, part Turkmen, part Muslim, part Zoroastrian—Iranian,
in other words—she grew up in Tehran, where she studied
at the Lycée Français, before leaving for Vienna
and, later, Strasbourg to study Decorative Arts.
In 1997, Satrapi moved
to Paris, where she met Christophe Blain, who brought her into
l’Atelier des Vosges, home to many of France’s celebrated
“new wave” of comic book artists. There, she regaled
her fellow artists with amazing stories of her family—stories
of dethroned emperors, suicidal uncles, state-sanctioned whippings,
and heroes of the revolution—in short, the details of
daily life in contemporary Iran. After listening to her stories
and seeing her drawings, they kept asking why she was waiting
to put her life in the pages of a comic book.
Persepolis
tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s youth in Iran in
the 1970s and 80s, of living through the Islamic Revolution
and the war with Iraq. It is a book about childhood, a childhood
at once outrageous and ordinary—beset by the unthinkable,
but buffered by an extraordinary and loving family. Persepolis
was published in four volumes in France, where it met with enormous
critical acclaim, garnered comparisons to Art Spiegelman’s
Maus,
and won several prestigious comic book awards (Prix Alph’art
Coup de Coeur at Angoulême, Prix du Lion in Belgium, Prix
Alph’art du meilleur scénario, and the Prix France
Info). Persepolis
has been translated into German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Italian, among other languages. The work is published as
two volumes in the United States: Persepolis
and Persepolis
2. In October 2007 it will also be available as a single
volumn titled The
Complete Persepolis. Marjane Satrapi’s other books
include Embroideries
and her latest adult book, Chicken
with Plums (fall 2006). Satrapi is also the author of
several children’s books, including Monsters
are Afraid of the Moon.
Marjane Satrapi lives
in Paris, where her illustrations appear regularly in newspapers
and magazines. he animated film adaptation of Persepolis
(US release December 2007) has garnered huge international acclaim
and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival; in 2008
it was nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Animated
Feature Film.”
•••
“You've never
seen anything like Persepolis — Marjane Satrapi
may have given us a new genre.”
— Gloria Steinem
“A
mighty achievement [and] inspiring coming-of-age story.”
— USA Today
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