Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return [Hardcover]

"" Persepolis 2 "is much more than the chronicle of a young woman's struggle into adulthood; it's a brilliant, painful, rendering of the contrast between East and West, between the repression of wartime Iran and the social, political, and sexual freedoms of 1980's Austria. There's something universal about Satrapi's search for self-definition, but her experiences in Vienna and Tehran are rendered with such witty particularity, and such heartbreaking honesty, that by the end of this book you'll feel you've gained an intimate friend." --Julie Orringer, author of "How To Breathe Underwater"
" Marjane Satrapi's books are a revelation. They're funny, they're sad, they're hugely readable. Most importantly, they remind you that the media sometimes tell you the facts but rarely tell you the truth. In one afternoon "Persepolis" will teach you more about Iran, about being an outsider, about being human, than you could learn from a thousand hours of television documentaries and newspaper articles. And you will remember it for a very long time." --Mark Haddon, author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"

"From the Hardcover edition."

Sequel to the critically acclaimed Persepolis: the story of Marjane's challenging adolescence as a high-school student in Austria and later as a Western-influenced young art student in Iran.

Here is the fascinating and equally unforgettable sequel to Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's memoir-in-comic strips of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis ended on a cliffhanger in 1984, just as fourteen-year-old Marjane was leaving behind her home in Tehran, escaping fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in the West.

Here we follow our young, intrepid heroine through the next eight years of her life: an eye-opening and sometimes lonely four years of high school in Vienna, followed by a supremely educational and heartwrenching four years back home in Iran. Just as funny and heartbreaking as its predecessor - with perhaps an even greater sense of the ridiculous inspired by life in a fundamentalist state - Persepolis 2 is also as clear-eyed and searing in its condemnation of fundamentalism and its cost to the human spirit. In its depiction of the universal trials of adolescent life and growing into adulthood - here compounded by being an outsider both abroad and at home, and by living in a state where you have no right to show your hair, wear make-up, run in public, date, or question authority - it's raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

(20040315)

Sequel to the critically acclaimed Persepolis: the story of Marjane's challenging adolescence as a high-school student in Austria and later as a Western-influenced young art student in Iran.

Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the French school, before leaving for Vienna and Strasbourg to study illustration. She currently lives in Paris and regularly contributes illustrations to newspapers and magazines internationally, including The New Yorker. She is the author of several children's books, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir Persepolis. (20040315)