A great finish to the story of Marjane as she is once again on her own and searching for her true self.

While the movie was so-so, in my opinion, mainly due to the subtitles, I thoroughly enjoyed the two books that make up the story of Persepolis. Sometimes I would read and even forget that this is a true story and not just a tale

I would highly suggest the complete Persepolis for anyone searching for a little history lesson along with an adventure because this certainly is a great story to hear.

After leaving home to go to school in Vienna at the end of Persepolis, Marjane moves from one home to another, all the while trying to fit in with classmates. Beginning when she was fourteen, she recounts rooming in a convent, her first love, and finally living on the streets before returning to Iran.

Her story of adolescence and young adulthood is heartbreaking. The theme of fitting in - or not - among others stands out throughout much of the story: too Western here, too Eastern there, and feeling separated because of the vast differences between experience of war or love or what have you. Though the particulars may not seem familiar, the universal themes are completely relatable. ( )

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6... ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1185816...

I'm startled to see that it is four and a half years since I read (and greatly enjoyed) the first volume of Satrapi's autobiography. At the end of the previous book she had managed to get out of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Austria. Persepolis 2 falls into two halves: her Austrian experience, and then her return to Iran, at the end of which she emigrates again to France. In both Vienna and Tehran, she is in a relationship whose breakdown is a key factor in her decision to leave. But the narrative similarities between the two halves of the book actually help to contrast the huge differences between the two. In Vienna, she is an immigrant, sworn at by old men on buses, bereft of family links, ending up sleeping on the streets in the middle of winter. In Tehran she is spoiled by her experience of the outside world, picks fights with the religious authorities, has difficulty fitting back in. (In both cases, though this is not quite how she outs it, she struggles with substance abuse and depression.)

The story of the education of Marjane is told with detachment, and occasional amusement and shame at the actions of her younger self. As with the first volume, however, the real strength of the book is her depiction of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where few actually support the principles of the revolution, but all must pay lip service to it, and all women must obey the dress code. (She also answers a question I almost asked a few weeks back.) As an art student, she has the bizarre experience of trying to draw a fenale model whose body is completely covered; the girls solve this by modelling for each other at home. She successfully challenges the college to change the uniform for female students, and ends up designing it herself. Finally, at the end of the book, she and her husband embark on a grand project exploring Iranian culture and mythology; but in the end it turns out to be incompatible with the principles of the Islamic Revolution, and their marriage ends, and Marjane leaves for France.

It's all in black and white: on the surface there appear to be no shades of grey in Satrapi's world. But if you look closely you can see that they are there. ( )

Just as Persepolis was set against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution, Persepolis II follows Marjane into the Iran-Iraq War. Kind of. She's in Europe for a lot of it, and a good amount of the book is about her experiences with family and friends and relationships and less about politics.

But the fundamentalist government lurks in the background and affects even the most minute aspects of Marjane's life - for example, a life drawing class is more or less useless when everyone has to cover every inch of skin. She reflects that these strict prohibitions are only distractions; if women walk outside every day wondering whether their pants are long enough, they then wouldn't be wondering where their freedom of thought and speech went.

Persepolis is an interesting coming of age story, and a critical but thoughtful look at recent Iranian history ( )