The Shah is a very harsh ruler who sees himself in the line of Cyrus the Great and other great Persian rulers. Her grandmother visits and tells her more about the Shah. Marjane tries to imagine what such torture would have felt like. Her grandfather had become a communist, however, and had been imprisoned and tortured by being put in cells full of water. Marjane's grandfather had been a prince before Reza Shah came to power and, after had been the Prime Minister of Iran. The British made sure he had been instituted as Emperor. The British had learned of Reza Shah's desire to overthrow the king and, seeing an opportunity to profit from the country's rich oil fields, the British had supported Reza Shah's plans. This had been during a time when Western democratic ideals were being instituted in many countries around the world. Marjane's father explains the history of the Revolution to her: Reza Shah had been a foot soldier fighting against the King of Persia in order to install a republic. The author begs her parents to let her attend the demonstration, but they refuse because she is too young. The fire, they say, was ordered by the Shah and the people plan to demonstrate. One night, while talking to God, she overhears her parents talking about a fire at a local theater in which 400 people died. She knows of world history because of books that her parents give to her, and her favorite book is a comic book called Dialectic Materialism, in which Marx and Descartes argue over the validity of the material world. She and her friends often pretend to be revolutionary figures such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.

When she announces her plan, her classmates and teacher ridicule her but she retains the hope that she will one day be the symbol for justice, love, and the wrath of God. She has conversations with God in which she imagines that there will be cultural and social equality and that old people will not suffer from pain. The author believes that one day she will be the last prophet. Her mother protests against the changes and her picture appears in newspapers across Europe.

Her French non-religious school is abolished and boys and girls are separated for education. There are many protests both for and against this cultural revolution. The author writes that the purpose of her book is to show that Iran is not a country of fundamentalists and terrorists, and that characterizations of the country by the West are inaccurate.Īs a ten-year old girl, the author is forced to wear a veil to school by those that called for a cultural revolution in Iran. It is an abbreviated history of Iran from its first occupation by Indo-European nomads, to the establishment of the Persian Empire, to the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Persepolis begins with a short introduction.

Persepolis the story of a childhood