Global Voices Book Challenge – #gvbook09

I am shamelessly late with this one because the challenge was planned for last week. However, I do not want to keep it for myself due to my laziness last week. So, Global Voices team decided to prove to the world that the written word matters and read a piece of literature of a country each of us is not familiar with. It’s easy to choose a book from a known cannon, but difficult to pick something we do not know. I needed to start somewhere, so as usual with me the title was a result of serious of coincidences. First I started reading about the Middle East and social media in that area. I met few extremely interesting bloggers from the area and talked to them. The second step was the Vimeo video on the blogosphere in Iran, which I found fascinating. And thus I decided to read something from Iran. I just needed a tip – and Shelfari proved to be a good place to go. By choosing the country in the search I have arrived at the book I have so missed out on so far!

‘Persepolis‘ by Marjane Satrapi is a story of a girl who travels to her native Iran and Europe in search of a good place to be. It’s a struggle which is described in a black and white comic strip form which makes the messages all the stronger. I will not talk about the content because everyone should read it themselves. I just want to point out how comfortable I feel living in the UK where all my basic human rights are so deeply rooted in society that I very often forget about the liberty of having them! Reading the book was difficult at the beginning  – I went to bed rethinking every single chapter and felt like I am slowly, very slowly stepping into the character’s world. Later I managed to speed up and finish it off in one day, still with a heavy heart. Only thanks to the film ‘Persepolis’ did I manage to let all the emotions go and finally cry! (for those who do not know me – good sign;))

Now I am reading more about Iran, and more and more about the Middle East, but time to time still check the trailer and the book itself. It definitely opened a new chapter of my life! More posts on the challenge and other interesting reads here.