Persepolis: telling the horror, quite simply
I knew I had to read it soon. It's not even 10 years old, and it's already a classic. Hipsters are reading it, journalists are reading it (I even saw Judith Lussier in Les Brutes leaf through it), the anarchists of Old Montreal read it, and those who don't read it respect it.
But then, I'm not a fan of comics (yes, shame on me, I'll work on that), and the simplistic cover didn't appeal to me. Why is it that when they talk about serious subjects well, authors think they don't need marketing?
Maybe because in this case, it's more like "unpretentious", like the whole book.
We witness the Iranian revolution of 1979 through the eyes of little Marjane. She sees the horrors emerge, her family members executed, the bombs, the fear and the inconsistencies of the new regime. So far, these are well documented horrors, nothing new.
But what is fascinating is to see the little girl grow up with this environment as a backdrop. All the "normal" stages of her life as a woman are exacerbated. As a child, she tries to find explanations and simplifies everything that happens around her. At puberty, she is forced to wear a veil and cannot walk down the street with a boy unless he is her husband, her guardian or her brother: men become an intriguing mystery, and her body a strange envelope (I laughed a lot when she describes how her body deforms as she grows, how she becomes "hideous" and doubles in size in a few months). As a teenager, she is downright rebellious. Like everyone else, she drinks and smokes pot, but she is also internally tortured because she goes against her culture: she feels like she is betraying her family, her religion, what she is. As an adult, she gets married (obviously), too quickly (obviously). After a month, she and her husband are in separate rooms. And in the end, she leaves alone for France, like a responsible woman who has seen too much.
Simplicity does its job. It's beautiful, it's touching, it's funny, it's scary. And it reads so fast and so well... I didn't have to make excuses.
Marjane Satrapi
L’Association
53,96 $
