By Jess McCabe | 26 April 2005, 23:39

Nerve is running a really interesting interview with Iranian comic book artist/writer Marjane Satrapi, about her latest comic Embroideries.

The comic documents Satrapi and her female friends and relatives talking (mostly about sex) over tea one afternoon. From her comments in the interview and the snippets of the comic, it seems like she is working to counter-act the view of women in Iran as purely victims, showing them forging their own alternative space.

Despire the well known oppression of women in Iran, things are changing, she says. From the Thousand and One Nights (“it’s full of sex”) to the Shi’a (a form of temporary marriage), she portrays a far more progressive side of Iranian culture than we have got used to hearing about.

She also has some words of wisdom about the Western world’s contradictory attitude to sex and old age, as well as nudity, which she says women use as a way of “veiling who they are”.