Persepolis 2

Persepolis 2 picks up Marjane Satrapi's life story in 1984, when her parents send her out of Iran to escape the war with Iraq and the tightening grip of religious fundamentalism. She lands in Vienna as a teenager, with no family nearby and none of her old friends. She eventually finds a circle of other misfits to belong to, but the sense of being an outsider never quite leaves her. Homesickness finally pulls her back to Iran once she finishes school. The return is not the relief she hoped for. The country has changed, so has she, and she carries a heavy sense of shame over what she sees as her failure in Austria. That weight stays with her until she meets friends who share her outlook, falls in love, and starts studying art at university. As she settles in, the repression and officially sanctioned sexism of daily life wear her down, and she begins to ask whether Iran can hold any future for her. Told in Satrapi's black-and-white comic panels, the book is darkly funny and moving by turns. It captures the ordinary struggles of growing up, made harder by being a stranger both abroad and at home, and it shows with sharp honesty what fundamentalism costs the people who live under it. This is the second volume of Satrapi's graphic memoir, following the first Persepolis.