UCOR 1000

"I'm not a politician. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world.

But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions." -Marjane Satrapi

Bestselling Artist/Illustrator and Filmmaker,

Author of Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Marjane Satrapi was born in in Rasht, Iran, on the edge of the Caspian Sea. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the Lycée Français, before leaving for Vienna and, later, Strasbourg to study Decorative Arts.

In 1997, Satrapi moved to Paris, where she met Christophe Blain, who brought her into l’Atelier des Vosges, home to many of France’s celebrated “new wave” of comic book artists. There, she regaled her fellow artists with amazing stories of her family—stories of dethroned emperors, suicidal uncles, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution—in short, the details of daily life in contemporary Iran. After listening to her stories and seeing her drawings, they kept asking why she was waiting to put her life in the pages of a comic book.

Source: barclayangency.com

BOOKS

Persepolis

Embroideries

Embroideries gathers together Marjane’s tough–talking grandmother, stoic mother, glamorous and eccentric aunt and their friends and neighbors for an afternoon of tea drinking and talking. Naturally, the subject turns to love, sex and the vagaries of men.

paperback version

Chicken and Plums

Chicken with Plums centers on an Iranian musician who wills himself to die. Yet the story that then unfolds, mostly in flashback, could hardly be more vital and engaging.

A former concert violinist, protagonist Nasser Ali chooses to perish early in the movie, which then circles back to explain his despair. Not even the title dish, his favorite meal, can lure him from his self-made appointment with the angel of death.

The movie was adapted by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud from Satrapi’s graphic novel. The same team brought Persepolis to the screen with animated renderings of Satrapi's drawings. For this tale, which is based on a Satrapi family legend yet has wider implications, the duo largely forgoes the graphic approach in favor of live action.

The Sigh

Satrapi's illustrated fairy tale. Rose is one of three daughters of a rich merchant who always brings gifts for his girls from the market. One day Rose asks for the seed of a blue bean, but he fails to find one for her. She lets out a sigh in resignation, and her sigh attracts the Sigh, a mysterious being that brings the seed she desired to the merchant. But every debt has to be paid, and every gift has a price, and the Sigh returns a year later to take the merchant's daughter to a secret and distant palace.

Monsters are Afraid of the Dark

One of several children's books

Every night as Marie climbed into bed, she got a visit from three monsters. They only came out in darkness, so she knew they must be afraid of the light. Marie took a huge pair of scissors, and cutting the moon out of the sky, hung it right in her bedroom. No darkness, no monsters!

FILMS