As Marjane Satrapi’s seminal graphic novel Persepolis celebrates 20 years in the English-reading world, we unravel its legacy for writers who have loved it, been inspired by it and sometimes questioned what its success means.
By Akshaya Pillai
What I remember more than the book itself is where I was when I first read it. Sprawled diagonally on the floor mattress, all of 20, away from home, barely two weeks into living alone in a 10th-floor studio apartment. Persepolis and Giovanni’s Room were the only two books I had splurged on at the second-hand bookstore. In the company of my new-found independence, I flipped through the intricate black and white illustrations that transported me into the turbulent heart of Iran’s revolution.
What I don’t remember feeling back when I first read the book was any sense of familiarity. Moving as it was, Persepolis was “elsewhere”. A terrifying tale that unfurled in a land far far away. I could relate to the complexities of cultural identity as the author Marjane Satrapi navigated her Middle Eastern heritage and Western influences. Or the part where the father of the 10-year-old protagonist Marjane, or Marji, learns of the letters Mehri, their young house help, had written to a boy in a neighbouring building and goes out of his way to let the suitor know that Mehri is his maid, not his daughter as she would have him believe. The rude awakening Marji underwent upon confronting her father’s constrained progressivism. The stark contrast between the public face that people often present and their actions in private. These struck a chord. So did the moments when clothes were used as the language of protest; Nikes and a denim jacket adorned with a Michael Jackson button. Satrapi’s Bildungsroman-esque graphic novel was a mirror of the small town-girl rebellion.
A decade and some later, as the English translation of the book celebrates 20 years, I am re-reading the book and I know that scenes in the book are closer than they appear. The practice of re-reading here becomes a confrontation of privilege. My stomach is in knots before I even pick the book up, my mind a slideshow of portraits. Twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini’s neatly tucked fringe. Sixteen-year-old Nika Shakarami’s stance by a dumpster, burning headscarf in hand, her last photograph. Closer to home, the pixelated faces of the Kuki women in a video I did not have the courage to open. These are images that parade my consciousness.
Ikroop Sandhu, author of the graphic novel Inquilab Zindabad, echoes my emotions. “When I read it two decades ago, it read like a story—an introduction to another part of the world, a new culture and its problems, disturbing yet distant. But now, the resistance and anger feel more familiar. Iranian women protesting the hijab don’t feel so distant anymore,” she says. Sandhu came across Persepolis in a bookstore in the early 2000s around the same time Art Spiegelman’s Maus had reached the Indian market. She remembers seeing the two titles on bookshelves next to each other, like conjoined twins. “Persepolis is an extraordinary book but I don’t go back to it too often because it is not casual reading, even though it is a graphic narrative. It asks for soulful engagement; Satrapi’s narration is a call to action. The power of her storytelling is evident in the anger and empathy it generates in me every time I read it.”
As I re-read Persepolis, it strikes me that black and white lends an air of foreboding to the narrative. Black and white suggests there is no grey, it is an easy choice. Good versus bad. Paired with the economy of language, this colour choice fosters an intimacy that is both haunting and immersive.
When I reach the section where Satrapi’s Uncle Anoosh, a political dissident, returns to Iran after many years in exile, my thoughts meander towards the power of graphic novels as a conduit for reaching the young. Here, Uncle Anoosh becomes a source of inspiration for Satrapi, introducing her to stories of resistance, courage and freedom. Through their conversations and his anecdotes, the young niece learns about the complexities of Iran’s political landscape and the struggle for human rights.
At this point I reach out to Ita Mehrotra, who is the author of Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection, a work that vividly chronicles one of the most significant political sit-ins of recent times. Predictably, Satrapi is one of her favourite graphic novelists. The book, she tells me, was formative in her understanding of the grammar of graphic novels. She stumbled upon Persepolis at a friend’s home when she was still in school. “I hadn’t yet started drawing comics then, but I remember thinking—this is what I’d want to do.”
Reading Persepolis for Mehrotra was primarily about getting to know the history of a country—from a very personal, woman-first standpoint. She felt like she could very much be part of the difficult, but also funny, family conversations at Marji’s home in Tehran. “When I first read it, and over the years too, I felt the resonance of the messy governance depicted, with what one is constantly witnessing in India. And equally with people taking to the streets in protest, which plays a significant role in the book,” says Mehrotra, Her own book, through conversations and interviews with the women who were at the forefront of the protest in the capital, captures pivotal moments from this movement, which inspired dissent and sparked a wider discourse across the country.
“Building on the language of feminist writers like Satrapi, I have always found it important to have women in my work speak for themselves, and in their own ways—bringing together details of their homes, their lived realities, along with sharp political observations. For example, in the Shaheen Bagh protests, the long duration of women being together really allowed for all sorts of conversations to take place while eating and singing and protesting. Depicting this without filtering the nuances was important. What Perepolis taught me is that it is possible to recount parts of large histories, not trying to piece together every bit, but really letting one feel one’s way through it,” she adds.
In parallel, my conversation with graphic novelist, artist and filmmaker Sarnath Banerjee is about the evolution of the graphic narrative. It was in the dimly lit corners of a London pub, amidst the clinking glasses and cacophony of conversations, that Banerjee first received a manuscript of Persepolis before it was even published. It was the early 2000s, and the graphic novel landscape was parched, dotted with tales of lonely white men and their romantic misadventures. The manuscript before him was a revelation—a burst of monochrome in an otherwise noisy world. Banerjee remembers being floored. “The style and substance was groundbreaking. It introduced readers to a world they knew very little about, to a world they had never imagined.” But now, two decades on, Banerjee’s perspective has evolved. It is not the book itself that has lost its lustre, but what irks Banerjee is the lens through which the West often views the rest of the world, a lens that is often internalised by non-Westerners too.
This shift in perspective is not merely a critique of literature; it is a reflection of a broader social dynamic. It speaks to the perils of monocultural storytelling, the need for embracing plurality and the discomforting realisation that, even in the realm of art, we may unwittingly perpetuate narratives that limit our understanding of the world. “The West is waiting to celebrate the brown body in conflict,” he says. The winding conversation with Banerjee sparks two pressing questions: Can our stories ever truly capture the richness and complexity of a country? And as we ponder the power of stories, should we not also ask if we risk the danger of cultural myopia in an increasingly fractured world?
None the less for me, Persepolis stands as a testament to the enduring possibilities of graphic storytelling—an art form that, like memory, thrives in the interplay of light and shadow, detail and abstraction. The chilling moments in the novel— scenes of secret police and censorship— echo the disturbing ways in which voices are silenced and dissent is crushed today. It makes one hope that in another 20 years, books like Persepolis will finally stop being relevant.
This article was originally published in the October 2023 issue of ON Stage.
