Persepolis Summary

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood has 19 chapters plus a short introduction by Satrapi. Every chapter is named after an object or a moment rather than an event, which is part of the method — the politics always arrives attached to something small and physical:

Revolution (chapters 1-8)

• 1. The Veil — 1980, the veil becomes compulsory at school
• 2. The Bicycle — the revolution explained through Marx, Descartes and God
• 3. The Water Cell — her grandfather was a prince, and was tortured in a cell filled with water
• 4. Persepolis — the family history, and the Shah's version of it
• 5. The Letter — Mehri the maid, and Marji's first lesson in class
• 6. The Party — the Shah leaves; the celebrations, and who was really in the cells
• 7. The Heroes — released political prisoners come to the house and describe what was done to them
• 8. Moscow — Uncle Anoosh arrives and tells Marji the family's real history

War (chapters 9-14)

• 9. The Sheep — Anoosh is arrested again and executed as a Russian spy
• 10. The Trip — the borders close, the universities shut, the veil becomes law
• 11. The F-14s — Iraq invades and the bombing of Tehran begins
• 12. The Jewels — neighbours flee, shops empty
• 13. The Key — plastic keys "to paradise" handed to poor boys sent to the minefields
• 14. The Wine — a party, a checkpoint, and the absurdity of the black market

Leaving (chapters 15-19)

• 15. The Cigarette — Marji smokes her first cigarette in rebellion against her mother
• 16. The Passport — an uncle needs surgery abroad and is refused a passport
• 17. Kim Wilde — the famous smuggled-poster chapter, and Marji is stopped by the Guardians of the Revolution
• 18. The Shabbat — a missile hits her street and kills the Baba-Levy family
• 19. The Dowry — expelled from school, Marji is sent to Austria

The second volume

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return adds another 19 chapters, from The Soup through Tyrol, The Veil, The Return, The Exam, The Wedding, The Satellite and The End — Vienna, homelessness, her return to Tehran, art school, a brief marriage and her final departure for France. The Complete Persepolis prints all 38 together.

This Persepolis summary opens in 1980, in a class photograph in which the narrator is sitting on the far left, so you cannot see her. She is ten, and this is the year the veil became compulsory at school. The girls do not understand it and use the veils as skipping ropes in the playground. The bilingual school Marji attends is closed, boys and girls are separated, and the first chapter has already established the book's method: a national policy, and then children using it as a toy.

Marji comes from a secular, left-leaning, comfortable Tehran family who demonstrate against the Shah and employ a maid, a contradiction her father is aware of and does not resolve. She is a religious child with a plan to be the last prophet, holding nightly conversations with a bearded God who sits on the end of her bed, while also idolising Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Her grandmother tells her their family history: her grandfather was a Qajar prince deposed by the Shah's father and later imprisoned, tortured in a cell filled with water.

The revolution arrives, the Shah leaves, and the family celebrates — briefly. Political prisoners are released, and two of them come to the house and describe, over tea, what was done to them with irons and cigarettes. Marji, who has been playing revolutionary games in the garden, listens. Then Uncle Anoosh appears: her father's brother, a communist who spent nine years in prison, who becomes the great love of her childhood. He tells her his story so that the family memory will not be lost, and makes her a swan out of bread, the way he did in his cell.

The new regime turns out to be worse than the old one for people like the Satrapis. Anoosh is arrested again, permitted a single visitor, and asks for Marji. He gives her another bread swan and calls her the little girl he always wanted to have. Days later the newspaper announces the execution of a Russian spy. Marji throws God out of her bedroom and does not speak to him again.

Then Iraq invades. The chapters that follow are the war seen from an apartment: the sirens, the F-14s, the neighbours who leave, the ones who are killed. The regime hands plastic keys painted gold to fourteen-year-old boys from poor families, telling them the keys will open the gates of paradise if they die in the minefields; Marji's mother hears about this and cannot speak. At the same time Marji is a teenager doing teenage things in a country where they are illegal — buying a smuggled Kim Wilde poster and Iron Maiden tapes on a street corner, wearing a denim jacket and trainers, and being stopped by the Guardians of the Revolution, who threaten to take her to the committee until she lies her way out by inventing a cruel stepmother.

The book's worst moment is domestic. A missile lands on her own street, and Marji comes home to find the Baba-Levy house destroyed. She sees a turquoise bracelet in the rubble, still attached to something, and knows it belonged to her friend Neda. Satrapi draws the panel as a black rectangle, and it is the only thing on the page.

After Marji is expelled for arguing with a religious teacher about political prisoners, her parents decide. Iran will not be survivable for her: she is fourteen, opinionated, and cannot stop saying what she thinks out loud. They arrange for her to go to a French school in Vienna. On her last night her grandmother sleeps beside her and gives her the advice the whole book is built to deliver — that she will meet a lot of jerks, that she should remember cruelty comes from stupidity, and that there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance. At the airport her mother faints and her father carries her away, and Marji does not look back for long.

The second volume, The Story of a Return, follows what happens next, and it is not a rescue. In Vienna she moves between a nuns' residence, friends' flats and a series of rented rooms, is treated as an exotic curiosity, discovers drugs and a boyfriend who leaves her, and ends up homeless in the street for two months, nearly dying of bronchitis. She goes back to Tehran at eighteen to a country that has won nothing from the war and to friends who cannot understand where she has been. She studies art in a system where life drawing means drawing a fully veiled woman, marries at twenty-one, divorces at twenty-three, and in 1994 leaves Iran again for France — this time knowing it is permanent.

Persepolis has two endings, and which one you mean depends on which book you are reading.

The Story of a Childhood — the volume most often set in schools — ends with a departure. Marji is fourteen, has been expelled for arguing with her teacher, and her parents have concluded that Iran will kill her or break her. The night before she flies, her grandmother sleeps in her bed and gives her the advice that has become the most quoted passage in the book: that she will meet many jerks, that she should tell herself their cruelty is stupidity, that there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance, and that she should always keep her dignity and be true to herself. At the airport her mother collapses and her father carries her off in his arms. Marji looks back once, and then decides it would have been better just to go. That is the last panel.

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return ends much later, and much more quietly. After four rough years in Vienna, a return to a Tehran she no longer fits, art school under a regime that will not let her draw a body, and a short marriage she ends herself, Marjane leaves for France in 1994. The final pages are another airport goodbye, this time with the knowledge that it is final: her grandmother dies not long after, and the last line notes that she never saw her again. The Complete Persepolis ends there — no arrival, no new life shown, just the leaving.

What makes the ending land is that the book refuses to convert any of it into triumph. Satrapi does not present exile as an escape or Europe as an answer; the Vienna years are the most degrading part of her life, and the return is a failure too. What survives is what her grandmother told her, and the instruction she gives in the introduction: one can forgive, but one should never forget.

The most quoted lines from Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, verbatim:

"One can forgive but one should never forget."

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."

"I tell you all this because it is important that you know. Our family memory must not be lost. Even if it's not easy for you, and even if you don't understand it all."

"You are the little girl I always wanted to have."

The first is from Satrapi's own introduction. The second is her grandmother, the night before Marji leaves for Austria, and it is the line most readers remember. The last two are Uncle Anoosh — the second of them said during the only visit he is allowed before he is executed.