Elham

I liked Persepolis. Beautiful drawings, hilarious jokes and facts about the fundamentalists and Iran's government and some perhaps good political dialogs and information for someone who hasn't known them already. I laughed and cried several times.

But as she grows up, I didn't find her as a strong author having a very rich plan to distinguish her work from a usual popular story – in fact if we remove the political and other things about Iran, there remain only some beautiful illustrations. I think the power of an author in writing can be more seen in her ability of imagination – not just what's happening and what will happen next. I liked the first sections more.

Moreover, this is a story about Iran from the eyes of a girl from a specific social class, her parents and relatives are communists and the king before Reza Shah was her grandfather. All these which are cleared from the first pages of the book, might make the reader have doubts of not being able to see an author with general political view points. The way that she claims the revolution was more due to communism party efforts, non religious people and women without headscarves in demonstrations is something that I couldn't accept easily. In fact to my knowledge 1979 revolution was both massive and Islamic. Although communists in Iran were some well organized and intellectual people, they never could deeply affect the whole society as much as Ayatollah Khomeyni could.