chicken with plums.

chicken with plums - marjane satrapi (jonathan cape)

satrapi's account of a celebrated musician's final days.

writers such as satrapi (and joe sacco, for that matter) are appealing because they stray from the constraints of the memoir or the graphic novel, and have different stories to tell that aren't well documented in the graphic novel format. chicken with plums is the story of a relative of satrapi who decides to commit suicide by giving up on life and remaining in bed. A celebrated musician, we discover that nasser ali khan loses the will to live upon the destruction of his beloved tar, a type of iranian guitar. chicken with plums contains a plethora of cultural references in its few pages, explained in the form of frequent annotations; referencing culture and iranian mythology. Similar to persepolis, satrapi educates as well as entertains, but leaves it until the concluding chapter to really make the reader pity nasser ali, as his motives for being driven to suicide are elucidated. essentially, it's a tragic love story, between nasser ali and irane, and nasser ali and his tar, but it's definitely something that I'd want to read again.