Here are 51 books that Pantheon Graphic Novels fans have personally recommended once you finish the Pantheon Graphic Novels series.
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I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
I love the transparency with which the author describes her family, immigrants who moved to Southern California in the 1970s.
At times, she mocks her family, but ultimately, it is endearing how she describes family love and how tradition can overcome everyday life for immigrants. By including her Uncle, she depicts how much, in the Iranian culture, an extended family can be involved in everyday life. She writes with a great deal of humor, making a heavy topic seem quite light.
NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir
This Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner!
“Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.”—San Francisco Chronicle
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no…
I'm an Iranian-American who left the country with my family after the Islamic Revolution. I'm watching the events unfold in Iran since the murder of Mahsa Amini with equal parts sadness and awe. Sadness for the loss of life and awe for the bravery of the young protestors in the country. My books will always have a nod to my culture of origin—whether about growing up in an immigrant household in my memoir, Americanized, or writing an Iranian-American character like Parisa in I Miss You, I Hate This. It's been fascinating to see people in America pay attention to what's happening in Iran and I wanted to share some books that'll help inform their perspective.
My family fled Iran a couple years after the Islamic Revolution, but growing up, my parents didn’t talk about that period in their life all that much. It was sort of like my friend whose dad never talked about Vietnam. So, even though I was born in Iran post-revolution, I didn’t learn much about the history of the Shah’s downfall until I read Marjane Satrapi’s incredible graphic novels –Persepolis, Books One and Two. Satrapi manages to create a funny and heartbreaking memoir about her adolescence during the revolution and her life as a young ex-pat living in Paris.
Follow it up with her graphic novella, Embroideries—which delves into the sex livesof Iranian women. Another topic that was generally off-limits in our household.
Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up as a girl in revolutionary Iran. • "That Satrapi chose to tell her remarkable story as a gorgeous comic book makes it totally unique and indispensable" —TIME
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both…
I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
I love this book because, ultimately, it’s about the portrayal of a daughter revealing her mother’s lifelong secret. The author describes her mother’s struggles in Iran before the author was born.
The book shows how secretive the Iranian culture can be and, the downsides and negative aspects of a patriarchal society, and the long-term damage it can cause.
'With this one word, Lili had finally understood many things: that no matter what she promised or sacrificed or gave, she would always be 'broken' to her daughter.'
When Jasmin Darznik finds a photo among her father's possessions shortly after his death, she recognises the child in the veil and bride's clothes as her mother, Lili, but the groom is unfamiliar.
Who had her mother married all those years before? A few months later Lili sends Jasmin ten cassette tapes which reveal the secret history of their family: the true story of the abusive man she married, and the daughter…
I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
Growing up as an immigrant can be confusing and challenging, especially if you are Iranian-born and immigrated to the US during or before the Iranian Revolution. I personally enjoyed this book because I can relate to the challenges of being an Iranian American immigrant and the search for an identity,y which is a theme in this book.
I also like how transparent she is about the fact that all is not perfect with Iran or its culture, especially as she travels back to Iran as a journalist and witnesses the imperfection firsthand.
As far back as she can remember, Azadeh Moaveni has felt at odds with her tangled identity as an Iranian-American. In suburban America, Azadeh lived in two worlds. At home, she was the daughter of the Iranian exile community, serving tea, clinging to tradition, and dreaming of Tehran. Outside, she was a California girl who practiced yoga and listened to Madonna. For years, she ignored the tense standoff between her two cultures. But college magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Iran as a journalist. This is the story of her search for identity,…
I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
Iranian food is the best food in the world. The author does a nice job describing her family’s move from Iran to the US and her accomplishments in the food business, becoming a chef, all the while honoring her mother.
She captures themes that are important to me, the Iranian Revolution, immigrating to the US, respect for your mother as well as food. What a perfect combination.
"A lavish taste of Persian culture and cuisine . . . [A] compelling, poignant and most delectable book."—BookPage
For Donia Bijan’s family, food has been the language they use to tell their stories and to communicate their love. In 1978, when the Islamic revolution in Iran threatened their safety, they fled to California’s Bay Area, where the familiar flavors of Bijan’s mother’s cooking formed a bridge to the life they left behind. Now, through the prism of food, award-winning chef Donia Bijan unwinds her own story, finding that at the heart of it all is her mother, whose love and…
When I learned in college that the Roman Emperor Constantine was largely responsible for determining the shape of the New Testament, it shook my outlook on religion and how it worked. Since then, I’ve studied the interplay of religion and politics for over 2 decades and taught the subject at universities on both coasts. These books aren’t just ones I find useful in teaching, but each has fanned the flames of my fascination and broadened my awareness and perspective. I hope you enjoy and find yourself thinking differently after reading them!
This book is another that radically changed my perspective, and I use it routinely to help illustrate how complex the topics of religion and politics are.
What benefited me most is how Hurd challenges the very category of religion and how that category is (mis)applied in several countries. I love how she takes to task the simplistic narratives around religion and shows that they are not only insufficient but downright dangerous.
This book clearly outlines those dangers, their origins, and some noteworthy suggestions for how we can better deal with religion around the world. I find something new in each reread, both in terms of the contexts she analyzes and her approach.
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. Beyond Religious Freedom persuasively argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. She shows how these…
When I learned in college that the Roman Emperor Constantine was largely responsible for determining the shape of the New Testament, it shook my outlook on religion and how it worked. Since then, I’ve studied the interplay of religion and politics for over 2 decades and taught the subject at universities on both coasts. These books aren’t just ones I find useful in teaching, but each has fanned the flames of my fascination and broadened my awareness and perspective. I hope you enjoy and find yourself thinking differently after reading them!
Rarely has a book blown my mind like this one. Kahn lays bare the foundations of our modern political structures and how we adapt religious conceptions to imbue our states with a sacred aura. I’m fascinated by sacrifice and its place within our civic life, and this book highlights how nearly every aspect of our sovereign international system relies to some extent upon the concept.
It’s like a conceptual history of our modern nation-states that reveals them as ‘religious’ undertakings. While the other books on the list lay out the historical and sociological aspects of religion and politics, this book showed me how religion IS politics—and politics, religion—in unexpected and important ways.
In this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign. Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains…
When I learned in college that the Roman Emperor Constantine was largely responsible for determining the shape of the New Testament, it shook my outlook on religion and how it worked. Since then, I’ve studied the interplay of religion and politics for over 2 decades and taught the subject at universities on both coasts. These books aren’t just ones I find useful in teaching, but each has fanned the flames of my fascination and broadened my awareness and perspective. I hope you enjoy and find yourself thinking differently after reading them!
It can be hard to see how religion impacts the world, but this book opened a world of perspectives for me. Written by some of the biggest names in the academic world—and including recorded conversations between them—I found this book to be essential for understanding religion’s interactions with gender, race, power, and the shifting nature of secular societies.
I always like reading the most important modern thinkers, and what I appreciate about this book is it is manageable and digestible, so it serves as a great introduction to topics that fill numerous library shelves. It caps off with a brilliant discussion by Craig Calhoun, who rounds out an eye-opening set of discussions.
The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while Jurgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience…
When I learned in college that the Roman Emperor Constantine was largely responsible for determining the shape of the New Testament, it shook my outlook on religion and how it worked. Since then, I’ve studied the interplay of religion and politics for over 2 decades and taught the subject at universities on both coasts. These books aren’t just ones I find useful in teaching, but each has fanned the flames of my fascination and broadened my awareness and perspective. I hope you enjoy and find yourself thinking differently after reading them!
I don’t think I really understood the relationship between religious faith, constructions of race, and the law before reading this book.
Darian-Smith walks the reader through several essential cases from the 16th to the 21st centuries, all grounded in thorough analysis and accessible prose. Reading her chapter on the Dawes Act and the way the law was weaponized against Native communities in the U.S. knocked me on my heels, while her final chapters on the Nuremberg war trials and the challenges of neoliberalism in an age of globalization redefined my understanding of our modern world.
With illustrations throughout and an ability to paint a clear picture of the topic, this is a book I return to regularly.
The book highlights the interconnections between three framing concepts in the development of modern western law: religion, race, and rights. The author challenges the assumption that law is an objective, rational and secular enterprise by showing that the rule of law is historically grounded and linked to the particularities of Christian morality, the forces of capitalism dependent upon exploitation of minorities, and specific conceptions of individualism that surfaced with the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and rapidly developed in the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing upon landmark legal decisions and historical events, the book emphasizes that justice…
As an American artist and writer who has lived in European cities for the last decade and a half—first Berlin, now Paris—I often look for echoes of dislocation and longing in the books I read. My first published book explores the lives of people who fled other countries to arrive in a city filled with a complex and dark history.
My partner recommended this book, only recently translated into English, about a Parisian gallery worker, Naïma, who unravels her family's tangled history between rural Algeria and France. In this book, Zeniter explores the complex aftershocks of colonization and how they affect and inform subsequent generations of migrants.
Naïma’s family story in France begins when her grandfather, Ali, flees North Africa after the Algerian war for independence. Coming from a mountain village, Ali finds the decrepit French apartment blocks bewildering and unwelcoming. The final section of Zeniter’s book is devoted to Naïma’s return to Algeria, where she attempts to weave together the past and future of her family and her identity.
'Remarkable . . . a novel about people that never loses its sense of humanity' - The Sunday Times
'Zeniter's extraordinary achievement is to transform a complicated conflict into a compelling family chronicle.' - The Wall Street Journal
Naima has always known that her father's family were from Algeria - but up until now, that has meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she has learned from her grand parents' tiny flat in a crumbling French sink estate: the food…
