Sunday, October 11, 2009



Amazon Exclusive: Marjane Satrapi Reviews The Locust and the Bird

Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran and now lives in Paris, where she is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers throughout the world, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. She is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Persepolis and Persepolis 2. She co-wrote and directed the Academy Award-nominated animated film version of Persepolis. Read Satrapi's exclusive Amazon guest review of The Locust and the Bird:

While I was reading Hanan Al Shaykh’s new book, The Locust and the Bird, my regret as an author was not to have known Kamila, Hanan’s mother, the extravagant narrator of this book. What a woman! What a storyteller! She reminds me of my beloved grandmother (who is in many of my books), and many other women of her generation that I knew, who were manipulative in order to survive, who lied in order to establish the truth, and, most of all, so full of life and passion. When I finished the book I had one major thought: this book needs to be made into a movie, but this is the kind of story one needs to be a real Lebanese in order to turn it into a movie. That was my other regret as a movie maker. But most of all I felt extremely lucky to spend time with someone so intelligent, full of humor and love. --Marjane Satrapi