An new anthology captures the grit and resilience of ordinary Iranians

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In an essay titled, A Persian Tale of Good and Evil, which opens the anthology Woman Life Freedom, graphic artist Marjane Satrapi and scholar Abbas Milani invoke writer James Joyce’s famous saying: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." What follows is a roll call of renowned women from Iranian history, starting with legends like Anahita, a divine source of light and reason, to Tahmineh, mother of Sohrab in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, to Ghamar, who mesmerised audiences in the 1920s with her Edith Piaf-like voice, to 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for inappropriately wearing her veil in 2022.

Also read: Malcolm Gladwell's ‘Revenge of the Tipping Point’ is just some shallow fun Outraged by the last tragedy, millions of Iranian women erupted in protest against the ruling regime, taking to the streets and tearing off their veils, chanting “Death to the Dictator". In an unusual show of solidarity, men joined them, too, as the movement spread all over Iran and beyond, ringing with the slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom".

Created by Satrapi, this eponymous anthology is an attempt to capture the defiance, grit and resilience embodied by ordinary Iranians over the last two years even as the campaign for justice has seen deaths, disappearances, public hangings and imprisonment. Enriched with art by creators like Hippolyte, Nicolas Wild, Shabnam Adiban and Bahareh Akrami, and words by Farid Vahid, Jean-Pierre Perrin, Milani and Satrapi, this stunning volume is a homage to the political potential of comics.

Satrapi, best known for her graphic memoirs Persepolis, is among the forerunners of the genre from Iran. Having used the medium