Saturday 14 April 2012

Book Review: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi


 PERSEPOLIS is a GREAT BOOK ! This book is not only funny, witty with it's raw honesty, but it's a great insight into the Iranian culture. A young girl, MARJANE, flees Iran during the Islamic Revolution and goes to  Austria,she tries very hard to fit, including finding a group of friends that are " anarchists" and becoming her High School's Pot Dealer. She falls in love, gets thrown out of her apartment for theft and lives on the Vienna streets for awhile. She becomes very ill and has to go to the hospital, finally, fed up of her life in Austria and longing for her homeland Iran, she returns home.

Once home, ironically, she encounters the same culture shock she experienced in Vienna, Austria. Feeling very judged by her previous classmates and feel the malaise of not fitting in, she decides to end her life, when she fails at that, she sees it as a sign from the universe that she is supposed to live, and after that she has a rebirth. She re-invents herself and becomes a life affirming Aerobics Instructor, a sophisticated woman who wears make up, drinks and has a boyfriend. She ends up getting married to her beloved, and finally when the Iranian politics get too intense and her freedom as a woman more and more oppressive,  family pleads her to leave Iran for good. She ends up moving back to Paris and becomes a successful graphic designer

Persepolis is a wonderfully, humorous, biographical account of Marjane Satrapi's life. I like the character Persepolis, she's feisty,bold and intelligent. She is also very funny and there are many favorite parts of the book, one is when the Nuns tell her, " Iranians don't have any manners", and she feisty replies, " All nuns used to be prostitutes. Another part, while reading the book Marjane's Mother's favorite, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex she pees to get the man's perspective, just as De Beauvoir suggested. I found myself laughing out loud to the surprise of many an onlooker on the bus, but I didn't care  this book was just too entertaining.

Marjane is a great heroine, among the great heroines in Literature, Scarlette O'Hara, Jane Eyre and Gwyneth Harlow. Persepolis is a GREAT book, and like all GREAT books they can be read over and over again.




All blogs are written by Sabrina Rongstad-Bravo More Tales and Adventures in Sabrina's London Diaries
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