About this episode

This episode is a tribute to Marjane Satrapi, discussing her influential work 'Persepolis' and its themes.

In memory of the recently passed Marjane Satrapi (1969-2026), re-airring our chat about Persepolis from July 2024). Rest In Peace/Power. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/04/nx-s1-5846531/marjane-satrapi-obituary “The normalization of things being taken away. You see all the things going on in Tehran in 1979 — you see them here as well, which makes it a sad, scary, and timeless tale.” PERSEPOLIS, by Marjane Satrapi is an award winning, now banned graphic autobiography from the early 2000s about a young girl growing up in Iran, and becoming a woman overseas, returning home, and dealing with everything in between.Originally published in French, Persepolis has sold millions of copies worldwide, and Satrapi also produced an award-winning film of the same name. In Persepolis, we meet young Marjane “Marji” Satrapi growing up in Tehran just before and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, as well as thru the start of the Iran + Iraq War in the 1980s. Her parents are secular, upper-middle class activists, who worry for their precocious daughter's safety in the increasingly conservative and dangerous Iran, so send her off to Austria to become a teenager. Her teen years are fraught with all the…

Topics covered

• Marjane Satrapi
• Persepolis
• Iranian history
• graphic autobiography
• cultural identity

Keywords

• Marjane Satrapi
• Persepolis
• Iran
• graphic novel
• cultural identity
• autobiography
• Iranian Revolution

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Persepolis

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