Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is a two-part graphic novel in which the author recalls growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and in Europe during the 1980s. As the daughter of educated, left-leaning parents, Marjane’s home life contrasted sharply with the strict Islamic culture that engulfed Iran just after the revolution. Accordingly, her memoir recounts the swift changes and varied reactions of her family to the events of the revolution. While not a journalistic account, the story offers her perspective, as an outspoken young woman, about the great changes occurring around her. In this excerpt, a young Marjane reacts to the early days of Iraq’s war with Iran.

Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She now lives in Paris, where she is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers throughout the world, including THE NEW YORKER and THE NEW YORK TIMES. She is also the author of several children’s books, Embroideries, and the internationally best-selling and award-winning comic book autobiography in two parts, PERSEPOLIS and PERSEPOLIS 2. Persepolis is currently being made into an animated feature film, cowritten and codirected by Satrapi, which will be distributed by Sony Picture Classics in 2007.

Excerpted from Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi © 2003. Reprinted with permission by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.