Hot off the Shelf: What I'm reading - ‘Persepolis’ Satrapi, Marjane.

Spoilers. Again. I’ll try to do the next one without them!

For a start…what is Persepolis? What does it mean? That was the first question I had. Here’s a definition:

“Persepolis means "City of Pars" and it was the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid dynasty in its golden era.”

Here’s another one:

                “Persepolis: An ancient city of Persia northeast of modern Shiraz in southwest Iran. It was the ceremonial capital of Darius I and his successors. Its ruins include the palaces of Darius and Xerxes and a citadel that contained the treasury looted by Alexander the Great.

There you go.

GoodReads gives a fantastic summery of the book:

“Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.”

I will admit there is another reason I copied a summery from GoodReads, instead of writing one myself. I am not at all a political person. Politics often washes over me, and my history is just as bad. Therefore books that are particularly political or require a decent understanding of certain eras of history, tend to muddle me a bit. I often wonder how to summarise without making mistakes or sounding too basic. So GoodReads, thank you for that neat, perfect summery. Now here’s what I thought about it.

I’m trying to branch out with the types of novels I’m reading. Persepolis is a memoir, written in comic strips. I found it funny, heart-breaking and shocking all at once. It’s raw and very, very powerful. I’d say it was like nothing I’d ever read on the subject – but what I have read on the subject amounts to very little, so it’s not saying much. You believe everything she writes, it’s not over done and the language develops as we see Satrapi grow from a headstrong child, full of truth and ideas in to a beautiful woman, still full of opinions and journeying from the lowest places a human can be trapped (emotionally and physically) to the happy and comic moments that adulthood brings. And I’ll tell you one thing:

It was the best history lesson I’ve ever received. Who said books could teach you nothing?

Read this. It’s important. Because no-one tells history like the people that have been through it. Satrapi went thought it.

Over and out.