July 22, 2003

comic con loot

Alex went to Comic Con last weekend. I wasn't able to join him, but he brought me back some goodies: The third volume of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (the French edition--it's not out yet in English.) This one talks about her four years in Vienna in the 1980s, after her parents sent her off to live with a friend to attend high school there, in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. Her sharp observations about what it's like to be a foreigner (a Middle-Eastern woman to boot) in Kurt Waldheim's Austria is laced with her trademark humor. I'm looking forward to the next book, which talks about her return to Iran as a young woman. Alex also got me Broderies, a humorous little book about the women in her family. It's so delectable that I'm rationing myself to ten pages a day.

Update: Why didn't I hear about this before? Grant Morrison (of X-Men fame) is writing an "Islamic sci-fi love story" for DC comics, titled Vimanarama and due out in the Spring. Link via Bookslut.

posted by Laila Lalami at 10:45 AM