LONDON.- This autumn, Sotheby’s will offer the original book art for the international bestseller and seminal autobiographical comics series Persepolis, written and drawn by French-Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi. Highly acclaimed worldwide, the graphic novel is considered a modern masterpiece, listed on The Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century and adapted into an acclaimed Oscar-nominated animated film. Since its release in 2000, Persepolis has joined the pantheon of editorial successes for graphic novels, alongside Art Spiegelman's Maus or Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta.

An important piece of literature discussing social issues, combining comical and intimate storytelling elements with political and spiritual questionings, Persepolis defies narrative conventions, disrupting Western prejudices on Iranian history and global ideas on perceived notions of femininity. A multitude of details in vignettes of varying sizes, recurrent symbolic motifs and impromptu irruptions of imaginary scenes are so many tropes which, under the apparent simplicity of Satrapi’s style, fascinated readers worldwide. Challenging, honest and sometimes shocking, Persepolis has faced attempts at censorship: in 2013 the book was removed from both libraries and classrooms in Chicago, a move that provoked an outcry from teachers and anti-censorship groups.

Offered directly from Marjane Satrapi, forty-four individual sheets from Volume 1 will be presented in a dedicated auction, as part of Sotheby’s series of Middle East sales in London, with an estimate of £4,000-6,000 each. Marking the first opportunity to acquire original book art from Persepolis at auction, the sale will open for bidding on 19 October and run until 25 October; the sheets will go on view to the public in Sotheby’s London galleries from 21 October.

Marjane Satrapi said: “It was six months ago when I decided with Sotheby’s that I would offer my original book art with them this autumn, at a time when I could never have imagined it would be in the context of the incredible scenes we are seeing in Iran today. When I set out to write my story, I also could not have imagined that its message would be so universal. The proceeds from the sale will enable me to self-fund a future project and have the freedom to pursue it on my own terms.”




Ashkan Baghestani, Sotheby’s Contemporary and Middle Eastern Art Specialist, said: “Persepolis is an undisputed masterpiece, a phenomenon that transcended borders and established comic books as a literary genre in its own right. Drawn and written by the very hand of Marjane Satrapi, each of these pages is a tribute to the history of Iran, but also to every child who grew up in times of conflict. Iconic and profoundly symbolic, sometimes reminiscent of Persian miniatures, Marjane’s innovative black-and-white compositions revolutionised the field of graphic illustration.”

The first published volume of Persepolis details Marjane Satrapi’s coming of age during Iran’s Islamic Revolution through four tomes. The first section follows 10-year-old ‘Marji’, born to an Iranian progressive family directly descending from the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty. On 11 February 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is overthrown, and his government is replaced by an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This first tome strives to capture the tense and highly politicised atmosphere reigning within Iran during those times. The inner world of little Marji is brilliantly portrayed, as a young child evolving in a militant and revolutionary environment while dealing with her own youthful beliefs; at once fascinated by her family’s past and deeply attached to religion. But the many upheavals brought by the revolution come to upend the little girl’s convictions, along with her and her relatives’ existence.

The narrative thoughtfully incorporates major historical milestones within Marjane’s daily life and the characters that gravitate in her childhood – the introduction of the veil is addressed in relation to the heroine’s most influential feminine models, her mother and grandmother; the 1946 Iran crisis is reminisced through the story of her uncle Anouche and various governmental policies such as the liberation of opponents of the regime or political exile are enacted by the introduction of family friends to the plot.

The rest of the book follows Marjane as she grows up and travels back and forth between Europe and Iran, leveraging the juxtaposition of text and images to transcribe some distinctly physical issues of visibility, sexuality and identity. In choosing the media of comic books to share her story, Satrapi commits herself to a fundamentally self-performative process, unveiling quite literally her past and that of Iran to create an engaging and approachable space for the reader.

MARJANE SATRAPI BIOGRAPHY

Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran in 1969. In the advent of the political events that mark the beginning of Persepolis, she was sent by her parents to the French High School of Vienna, Austria, where she remained for four years. Upon her return to Iran in 1988, she began her studies at the Fine Arts School of Tehran where she graduated in Visual Communication. In 1994, she set off for France and entered the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. Soon after, Satrapi joined the atelier des Vosges, a group of comic book authors who shared the same studio in Place des Vosges, Paris. As she developed a taste for this new popular genre, the reading of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus by Art Spiegelman helped her to realise the medium’s potential as a means to share her story. Her first work, Persepolis, won the Angouleme Coup de Coeur Award in 2001 and the 2004 Best Books for Young Adults Award from the American Library Association. It also figured in Newsweek's Ten Best Fiction books list and was ranked 47th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century in 2019. Persepolis’ film adaptation, written and directed by Marjane Satrapi in collaboration with Vincent Paronnaud, premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize, followed by a long list of worldwide awards.