A conversation with Marjane Satrapi

Born 1969 in Rasht, Iran, Marjane Satrapi’s family life has been determined by the political whirlwinds that her country has been going through ever since. At the age of 14, her parents sent her to Europe, where she eventually studied art in Strasbourg. In 1994 she moved to Paris and started to create comics and children’s books. In a series of graphic novels that were first published in French in four volumes between 2001 and 2003, she tells the history of her country through the story of her own life — Persepolis. Today, high schools across Europe and the Americas use ‘Persepolis’ for history, gender and political science classes. It has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, English, Dutch and German, won several comics awards, and sold half a million copies worldwide. The English translation is by Vintage Books’ editor Anjali Singh for Pantheon Books, Random House.

Why use the comic form to tell such a serious and complex story?

It’s funny — I’ve been asked this question over and over again. Nobody asks a writer why did you make a book, or a movie producer why didn’t you dance or why didn’t you sing. But all comic makers have to justify themselves, why they make comics and not something else. I like comics, I like to draw and I like to write, and I don’t want to choose between one or the other to express myself. Everything is related in a way and I try to get away from this division between different art forms. I know comics may be a bit difficult to understand, sometimes, and maybe they demand an effort from people in perceiving both what’s in the drawings and in the writing. For every new story, I try to find a new way of drawing, a new way of telling the story, because in a comic book, the drawings are not illustrating what has been written, they are part of the narrative. Actually, at the beginning, I didn’t intend to make comic books, because, you know, it takes such a long time to produce one. You read it in one hour, but making a comic book can be two years of work. But then at some point I discovered another part of my character and started to do comics, and now I enjoy it very much.

It is still rare that women make comics, even in France…

Yes I know, I think it’s a cultural matter. You know, comics have always been made for a male audience, with the superheroes and so on. And then the women in the comics, like Castafiora in Tintin, haven’t been the kind of women with whom girls would like to identify. So yes, girls haven’t read comics that much, but things are changing and more and more women are making comics these days, just like there are more and more women directing movies. So it’s just a matter of time. Increasingly, the comic is not anymore restricted to a specific reading audience, and there are comics that people read as a book. Just as a story of which the quality will be judged by its contents, not just by its medium as a comic.

Your comic books reveal more about contemporary Iran and people’s identities in general than many an academic treatise.

I hope many people read them.

Is there a culture of comics in Iran? And do you think your books are circulating there?

My first experience with comics was before the revolution in Iran, when we got these American comics in a toyshop close to our house. So that was Batman, Spiderman and all that. But a culture of comics in Iran like in France for instance — no, I wouldn’t say so. Even though, Iranian people have a lot of humour, and there has been a tradition of illustrating and drawing also more serious things in the classical Iranian miniatures, so that is certainly something that stays in our collective memory. And well, I was told that Persepolis has been circulating in Iran, and that it was actually translated into Persian, but I haven’t seen it as yet. You know, people do read a lot in Iran, and a lot gets published regardless of copyright, so that’s not so exceptional.

You produced several children’s books and award-winning comics like Embroideries and Plum Chicken. What may we expect next?

Well you know, in the two coming years, a friend of mine and myself we’re going to make a long animation movie of Persepolis. That should keep me busy for a while. The whole scenario had to be re-written, and I’m learning to work together with other people. That’s quite a different approach than I’m used to, and another relationship to the work.

Extracts from a conversation recorded
at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 6, 2004. RA