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Le Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique © 2015 Arte Éditions/Éditions çà et là. By arrangement with the publisher. Rights arranged by the Nicolas Grivel Agency. Translation © 2016 by Ghazal Mosadeq. Lettering by Irvin Carsten. All rights reserved.
Le Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique © 2015 Arte Éditions/Éditions çà et là. By arrangement with the publisher. Rights arranged by the Nicolas Grivel Agency. Translation © 2016 by Ghazal Mosadeq. Lettering by Irvin Carsten. All rights reserved.
Television image of Neyestani during an interview with VOA Persian, 2010.
Listen to pronunciations of the Persian names in this story, read aloud by Mandana Naviafar.
(Listen on SoundCloud.)
Neyestani’s biography explains:
His use of an Azeri word for “cockroach” in a children’s cartoon published in May 2006 triggered riots among the Azeri minority, already persecuted by the Iranian government. The newspaper closed and Neyestani spent months in prison.
You can read Neyestami’s memoir of these events, “An Iranian Metamorphosis,” in the magazine WWB; and watch the documentary “Metamorphosis, Iranian Style,” below. (In Persian with English subtitles.)
(Watch on YouTube.)
Find out why an Iranian immigrant might come to Paris, in particular, in this entry from Columbia University’s Encyclopedia Iranica.
Learn about the inspiration behind Neyestani’s book, and read another story of immigration, in Paul Smalera’s memoir/review.
Cover of the book How to be an Alien, created by Nicolas Bentley, 1946.
New to learning about Iran? Read the country’s profile on encyclopedia.com.
In this satirical “guide”, cartoonist Mana Neyestani draws on his own experience as an Iranian refugee in Paris.
Television image of Neyestani during an interview with VOA Persian, 2010.
Iranian cartoonist Mana Neyestani was born in Tehran. For several years, he worked for the government magazine Iran. His use of an Azeri word for “cockroach” in a children’s cartoon published in May 2006 triggered riots among the Azeri minority, already persecuted by the Iranian government. The newspaper closed and Neyestani spent months in prison. Upon his release he emigrated to Malaysia and now lives in Paris. He received the Courage in Editorial Cartooning Prize from the Cartoonists Rights Network International in 2010.
Ghazal Mosadeq is an award-winning writer and poet. She is the winner of the Bayhaqi Short Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Khorshid Poetry Prize. She has published three poetry collections, Dar Jame Ma (2010), Biographies (2015), and Supernatural Remedies for Fatal Seasickness (2018). Her poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines in Iran, Canada, the UK, Portugal, and Greece. Actively involved in creating and promoting a dialogue between Persian and English literary traditions, she has embarked on translation from Persian to English and vice versa, and is involved in leading and producing creative writing workshops in Iran, the UK, and Canada. She is the editor of the Saan Literary Quarterly in Iran and a member of the jury for the Haft Eghlim Literary Award, as well as for the Jamalzadeh Award for Nonfiction.
Read an excerpt from Mana Neyestani’s memoir of the events that forced him to leave Iran, An Iranian Metamorphosis.
Panels from “An Iranian Metamorphosis,” showing a blindfolded prisoner walking, and a man telling him, “Good morning, Mr. Neyestani. Sorry I have bad news.”
Then, read an interview he gave in 2010, shortly after leaving Iran: Two sorts of red lines. (The interviewer has a political perspective that comes across in the piece.)
“Jihadists!” “Refugees?” See more work from Mana Neyestani on the United Sketches website.
You can read Neyestami’s entire 2003 collection, Tout va Bien! (“Everything is going well!”), in Sampsonia Way, an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/ Pittsburgh.
Watch a YouTube video that sets Neystani’s drawings to electronic music. (Some explicit language).
Or, find Neyestani on Facebook, where he has several hundred thousand followers.
The translator of this story, Ghazal Mosadegh, is also a fiction writer and poet. Read her story “Ney Boulevard,” which was inspired, in part, by “A Short Guide to Being the Perfect Political Refugee.” Below, Mosadegh explains how translating Neyestani’s story inspired her own:
“My comic book writer and cartoonist friend Mana Neyestani, who had gone through the whole process of applying for asylum in Paris, was of great help with the details. When he told me that the Préfecture de Police is located on a street called Ney Boulevard, the story began to take shape.”
Finally, you can find more fiction from Mosadegh in her book Biographies, “extra-ordinary biographies plus ordinary chairs,” available from Susak Press.
Read, watch, and listen to contemporary stories about immigration to the United States and migration around the world, beginning with Mohammed Elsaleh’s TEDx talk “The Refugee Crisis: Coming to a Doorstep Near You.”
Then, read 9 myths and facts about immigration from the Anti-Defamation League.
You can find more stories of refugees and immigrants in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and in the UN’s video archive.
For poems, articles, and audio/video recordings about the experiences of refugees, check out the Poetry Foundation’s “Poems on Immigration” collection.
The cover of Dina Nayeri’s The Ungrateful Refugee
For another story about leaving Iran, read Dina Nayeri’s memoir The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You.
Interested in reading more about refugees from other parts of the world? Check out The Displaced, an anthology of essays by refugee writers edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
(Note: both of these titles were recommended by Lesley Williams in this list of literatures of exile).
Panel from Ilya Kitup’s “The Only True Guide to Russia: Hidden Secrets Revealed.”
*For Teaching Idea 1
Also available on this website, these stories use classic comic techniques in new ways:
Marjane Satrapi speaking at the film premiere of Persepolis, 2007. By Rama.
*For Teaching Idea 2
Le Petit manuel du parfait réfugié politique © 2015 Arte Éditions/Éditions çà et là. By arrangement with the publisher. Rights arranged by the Nicolas Grivel Agency. Translation © 2016 by Ghazal Mosadeq. Lettering by Irvin Carsten. All rights reserved.
