Marjane Satrapi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marjane Satrapi (Persian: مرجانه ساتراپی) (born November 22, 1969 in Rasht, Iran) is a contemporary graphic novelist and illustrator. She grew up in Tehran in a progressive family. She attended the Lycée Français there and witnessed, as a child, the growing oppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and the first years of the Iran-Iraq war.
Satrapi's mother is a great-granddaughter of Nasser-al-Din Shah, Shah of Persia from 1848 until 1896. However, Satrapi points out that "the kings of the Qajar dynasty...had hundreds of wives. They made thousands of kids. If you multiply these kids by generation you have, I don't know, ten to fifteen thousand princes and princesses. There's nothing extremely special about that."[1]
In 1983, at the age of 14, Satrapi was sent to Vienna, Austria, by her parents in order to flee the Iranian regime. According to her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, she lived there during her high school years, returning to Iran for college. At college, she met a man named Reza, married then divorced him, and moved to France. She currently lives in Paris, where she works as an illustrator and an author of children's books. Satrapi's career began in earnest when she met David B., a French comics artist. She adopted a style similar to his, especially in her earliest works.
Satrapi has become famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed, autobiographical graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe in an intelligent and engaging portrait of everyday life. She also won the Album of the Year award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for Broderies, in 2003 (published in the United States as Embroideries) and for her most recent novel, Poulet aux prunes (2004).
She currently writes an illustrated column in the Op-Ed section of The New York Times, apparently on an irregular schedule. It was announced in 2006 that Sony Pictures Classics would be turning Persepolis into an animated film, to be released in 2007. Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, the French-language picture is to star the voice of Chiara Mastroianni and will also feature Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, and Simon Abkarian. It will also be released in English.[2]
[edit] Works
- Persepolis (French), L'Association, Paris
- Volume 1, 2000 ISBN 2-84414-058-0
- Volume 2, 2001 ISBN 2-84414-079-3
- Volume 3, 2002 ISBN 2-84414-104-8
- Volume 4, 2003 ISBN 2-84414-137-4
- Sagesse et malices de la Perse, (with Lila Ibrahim-Ouali and Bahman Namwar-Motlag), Albin Michel, Paris, 2001
- Les monstres n'aiment pas la lune, Nathan, Paris, 2001
- Ulysse au pays des fous (with Jean-Pierre Duffour), Nathan, Paris, 2001
- Adjar, Nathan, Paris, 2002
- Broderies, L'Association, Paris, 2003 ISBN 2-84414-095-5
- Poulet aux prunes, L'Association, Paris, 2004 ISBN 2-84414-159-5
- le Soupir, Bréal Jeunesse, Rosny-sous-Bois, 2004
- Poulet aux prunes, 2004 ISBN 2-84414-159-5
[edit] External links
- Marjane Satrapi's columns for The New York Times
- A few pages of Persepolis
- Her author page at Pantheon Comics' Web site
- Interview at Powells
- Interview at Bookslut
- Stripped Books: Persepolis 2.1 – The Story of a Signing
- Interview at Newsarama
- Profile of Satrapi at "Women Living with War"
- Robert Chalmers Interview at The Independent "Marjane Satrapi: Princess of Darkness"
