Book Review: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

I reviewed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood a couple of weeks ago; Persepolis 2 picks up immediately where the first book leaves off. Marjane is 14 when this novel begins, sent by her parents to live in Austria. Her life in Austria is one unfortunate event after another as she learns to navigate a secular society, where she is a foreigner. Although she is brilliant and does well in school, she eventually lives on the streets for a few months. She is physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted by the time she finally reunited with her family back in Iran. For the first several months back in Iran, she is withdrawn and morose. She wants someone to understand how much she has suffered in Austria. Eventually, though, she realizes that her suffering was largely brought on by her own poor choices, while her fellow Iranians have suffered tragedy upon tragedy caused by war.

The book is fantastic. As I said in my review of the first book, I love the graphic format of the novel. My son has watched the movie Persepolis, which he says is a combination of both Persepolis books, following the books quite closely but leaving out lots of scenes. I think I'll skip the movie, however. The images in the book were powerful enough for me.