Reading Persepolis in 2026

I first read Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis the year I turned fourteen. I’m sure, at that age, a lot of her prose had gone over my head; rich musings which described intricate political theory were as understandable to me as a foreign language. Her accompanying black and white illustrations of a childhood and early adulthood spent in post-Islamic Revolution Tehran had stood out to me the most – a powerful amalgamation of religious conflict, gender politics and punk music. I revelled in Satrapi’s brazen resistance against state pressures on women’s dress through her clandestine visits to black markets and untraditional clothing. 

Persepolis impacted a readership that stretched much further than fourteen-year-old me. Upon its release in 2000, it became a bestseller in every sense of the word. Her touching portrayal of family and public life, anti-fundamentalist private meetings and a theocratic reality have cemented its status as an incredibly evocative graphic novel. It has also caused the consternation of teachers, earning attempts at its removal from American classrooms, with educators claiming that it possesses  ‘inappropriate’ content for young students. 

Re-reading Persepolis eight years later did indeed garner some surprises. The depictions of martyrdom, torture and bombings were much more visceral than I remembered. More than anything else, Satrapi’s graphic recount of the lives of Iranian women struck much harder in the wake of certain events from the last few years. Iranian women in Satrapi’s memory were commodified, moral representatives to uphold the state. The Iranian woman of today continues to be restricted in her choice of dress, conduct, private and public life. The death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 is perhaps the most well-known example. Amini was arrested by Iran’s moral security on the grounds of not wearing her hijab properly. Whilst Iranian authorities had stated she died from natural causes, the extensive torture and beating she endured suggested otherwise. Amini’s detainment and death were part of a frequently repeated history of the harassment and persecution of women for improper coverage in Iran. Satrapi discusses this in length in her autobiography, including in a passage where she was cornered in the street at the age of thirteen by two women for wearing ‘punk’ shoes.

What has changed, then? Amini’s death sparked a social media campaign and widespread protests in September 2022. Whilst ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ was disseminated across Iran and the wider world, the Iranian state has continued their persecution of women with a reinvigorated zeal. 

Online surveillance has now become the most efficient tool in doing so, miles away from Satrapi’s descriptions of imposing officers and their public intimidation. 

The Iranian state has begun to use phishing to hack phones to find evidence for transgressive behaviour, including photos or videos documenting women without their hijab, to justify their arrest. A UN report in 2025 stated that the government developed a mass surveillance app named “Nazer” to encourage Iranian citizens to report on uncovered women, especially within vehicles. The app also allows users to include license plate information to ease the tracking process, streamlining arrests for ‘improper’ clothing and coverage.

The heightened monitoring of women’s dress and public conduct stresses the role which Iranian women have played within the state. Pro-regime demonstrations last week in Tehran have highlighted how women continue to be at the centre of morality and theocratic statehood. Photographs of Iranian girls and women amongst pink weapons and vehicles, stood under ballistic missiles and clutching portraits of the patriarchs of the Khamenei family, are abundant. Mass weddings in Tehran over the past month, as well as state-constructed interviews with women in support of the government, contribute to the perception of Iranian women as aligned with the authorities. Their morality is in direct correspondence with subservience to the state.

Satrapi’s autobiography covers the seeds of these events. She reminisces on forced military marches in her girls’ school in the 1980s and the posters of martyrs and their female carers which dominated Tehran’s skyline in the 1990s. Women were, and continue to be, vital to Iran’s militarised and religious governance. Deviations from patriarchal rule were relatively common, and Persepolis does not let the reader disregard the efforts of its author and her like-minded family, friends and colleagues in refusing to uphold this projection of Iran’s women. The protests of 2022 and increasing backlash against the misogyny of the Iranian state demonstrates that this resistance still flourishes.

Reading Persepolis in 2026 provided a well-needed reminder of the beginnings of the Iranian Revolution and the prompt acceleration of the suppression of women’s agency post-1979. Reading about the experiences of Iranian women today emphasises that new technology and infrastructure have ensured that the surveillance of Iranian women has become stronger, and much more intrusive, than in Satrapi’s time. Reading both is enough to remind anybody that institutional misogyny is supported by a state that encourages the collective invasion of the private and public lives of women.

Image: Flickr/Garry Knight

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