Marjane
Marjane is the novel's main character. The book is a narrative of her life from six years of age until fourteen years of age. She provides the childhood perspective from which the historical events of the novel are understood.
Mr. Satrapi
Mr. Satrapi is Marjane's father. He is a leftist political protestor that takes part in the demonstrations of 1979, yet he is also an established engineer and maintains a middle class lifestyle.
Mrs. Satrapi
Mrs. Satrapi is Marjane's mother. She holds leftist political views and often urges Marjane and her friends to rely on education as a way to further themselves and their country. Marjane often equates her with an overbearing presence as she grows older, yet she maintains a close bond and relationship with both her parents.
Anoosh
Anoosh is Marjane's uncle. He was imprisoned by the Shah for his communist views, but was released after the Revolution. He had been married in Russia, but his wife divorced him. Anoosh is arrested by the Islamic regime and executed on the false charges that he is a Russian spy.
Grandmother
Marjane's grandmother lives with Marjane's family for a while. Her husband had been a prince of the Shah and had been made prime minister. He had been arrested for conspiring with communists and tortured in a water cell. Her grandmother provides Marjane with a matriarchal figure.
Siamak
Siamak is a hero of the revolution. He had been captured and tortured by the Shah's police and had been released after the Revolution. The Islamic regime also seeks to capture him and they kill his sister in the process. Siamak escapes Iran by hiding in a group of sheep being transported across the border.
Mohsen
Mohsen is a hero of the Revolution and a friend of Marjane's family. Mohsen had been captured and tortured by the Shah's forces. He is murdered by the new Islamic regime by being drowned in a bathtub. The regime frames his death as a suicide.
Mehri
Mehri is Marjane's nanny and maid. She was taken in by the Satrapi's as a young child because her impoverished family could not support her. Mehri falls in love with a neighborhood boy but she cannot be with him because she is from a lower social class than he is.
Mali
Mali is a close friend of the Satrapi's. She comes to live with them for a while after their border town is bombed by Iraqi forces. She and her husband had been wealthy, and the work portrays them as quite materialistic, but they lost everything in the bombing.
Taher
Taher is Marjane's uncle. He suffers numerous heart attacks from smoking and from the stress of war. After his third heart attack, he is refused a passport by the hospital director and dies without seeing his son for a last time.
Khosro
Khosro is a friend of Marjane's family. He is asked to make a fake passport for Marjane's Uncle Taher, but he leaves the country before he is able to complete the job because of government persecution.
Niloufar
Niloufar is a young girl that hides in Khosro's basement. She is captured and executed by the Iranian government.
