It's tempting to say that Satrapi chose to write her memoir as a graphic novel because she's not very good at narrative writing, but to say that would be to completely undercut what this book has to offer.
Satrapi tells her story through brief narration and elegant black and white drawings, illustrating the repression in Iran (veiled women and bearded men drawn with no mouths) and the freedom of Europe.

Satrapi takes us from her childhood in Iran under the Shah through her experiences during the Islamic Revolution. Her parents send her to Austria when she is 14, and she stays there for 4 years. An outsider in Austria, she returns to Iran, only to continue to feel like an outsider, because she did was not in the country through most of the Iran-Iraq war, and therefore didn't suffer through the bombings and terror that her fellow Iranians did.

Back in Iran, Satrapi continues to be a rebel, but is able to enroll in college to get her degree in graphic arts. Throughout this section of the book, she depicts her personal struggle to reconcile her values with her life in Iran, and to find meaning in her life. She discovers that, for her, meaning comes through education, both personal and institutional, and leaves Iran again to pursue her studies in France.

Through both her drawings and her words, Satrapi tells not just her own story, but that of others affected by the repression in Iran. That this is a graphic novel gives the reader the feeling of a special insider's look into that world.

This book provides an interesting way to read and learn about an interesting point in history. I highly recommend it or anyone to read because it's comic book style makes it an easy and enjoyable read.

I highly, highly recommend this book. I could hardly put it down, and I never wanted it to end. A truely great story.

This book was one of the most interesting and unique books that I have ever read. It was given to me as a gift and I honestly didn't think that I'd like it. I was a bit put off by the comic book style, but it read just like a regular book. The comic strip part only enhanced it. LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!

This book was one of the most interesting and unique books that I have ever read. It was given to me as a gift and I honestly didn't think that I'd like it. I was a bit put off by the comic book style, but it read just like a regular book. The comic strip part only enhanced it. LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!

saw the movie, had to buy the book. thank you for making such a great film! It inspires on so many levels. dont miss this film, it speaks for all cultures and all people

This is my first Graphic Novel, but not my last. I loved the story and I felt that the book had a really nice flow. Marjane Satrapi as an exceptional story teller and has a very strong voice. I read this shortly after seeing the movie, and though I loved the movie, I felt that it left alot of important stuff out. The book really helped fill in some of the gaps, and you also got to see Satrapi's personality a bit more. I look forward to reading her other works. If you have never read a Graphic Novel, this is a great place to start.

I was surprised to find it was in comic strip format, but I enjoyed the lite reading.

Without harping too much on what has already been said about the political observations that Satrapi makes or her commentary on the limits faced by everyone (and most especially) women in Iran, the truly inspirational achievement of this work is how honest she can be about herself in the story. That with everything whirling around her, the fact that she can be honest about both the good and the bad of the relationships she'd been in, the despair both at home and abroad, the flickers of hope that she clung to during the darkest times and how (true to the reality of a hopeful young woman) the very worst thing that can happen is ultimately to let down yourself and to let down your loved ones is stark and amazing. The scene where she loses the trust and the good standing with her grand mother is heart-breaking and yet could happen to any teenage girl anywhere in the world. That it's depicted in basic drawings doesn't detract from the power of the moment in the least.

And not that graphic novels these days have any trouble being seen as legitimate art, but Persepolis certainly puts a nail in the coffin of the arguments made by detractors.

Trust this book for it's emotion, for it's personal honesty, for it's attempts to always find something good even under the most extreme circumstances. It is not a history book. It is a personal history book. And it is one that deserves applause.

In the chapter "The Shabbat", set before she leaves for Austria in 1984, Marjane describes how Iraqi Scud missiles start raining down on Tehran, killing her Jewish childhood friend and neighbor, Neda. However, according to Jane's Intelligence Review and other sources, no missiles reached Tehran before Iraq's Al-Husayn missile programme in February 1988. Why would she lie about this?

This book can join Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and Joe Sacco's "Safe Area Gorazde" as yet another graphical masterpiece. Very enjoyable book, couldn't put it down.

Even though I don't know much about graphic novels, I thought Persepolis was incredible. Also, I learned a lot about Iranian history from it. Also, even though I'm not Iranian, there are many parts of the book that are easy to relate to, for instance going to school thousands of miles from home. A great read!

THIS BOOK IS SO GOOOOD! I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO WATCH THE MOVIE! VERY HUMAN AND REAL ACCOUNT OF IRANIAN LIFE.

Last weekend I had the joy of seeing the film adaptation of the comic book series PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi. I loved the film. I knew though that I was missing out some key points of Marjane's life so I decided to check out the complete version of PERSEPOLIS in paperback. Although the book is in the form of a graphic novel, the story is a memoir of Marjane Satrapi's life growing up in Iran as well as outside of Iran. I also got the impression that the story is a love letter to Marjane's late grandmother who was a huge influence on Marjane as a young woman. People can nitpick at the details of life in Iran during and after the reign of the Shah that Marjane has written in the book but lets keep this in perspective that this book is not a tome on Iran but an autobiography told from the personal point of view from the author. She told what life was like in Iran through her young, impressionable eyes.

Like the Oscar-nominated film, PERSEPOLIS is told with a lot of humor, sadness, and often anger. I could not put the book down. I found myself deeply engrossed in Marjane's life as as child as well as an adult. I enjoyed the animation. I liked how fluid the shapes of the characters flowed. If you have seen the film adaptation of PERSEPOLIS, the book version is definitely worth reading. There is quite a bit of information from Marjane's life that just couldn't fit into the time constraints of the film.

Persepolis is a touching personal account of one girl growing up in a country on the brink-- of revolution, of war, of fundamentalism. Satrapi exposes herself in this at times painfully honest biography. The novel is entertaining, delightful, ammusing, humorous--but then the cold realities of life and living in a war-torn country set in. You feel her greatest joys and deepest pains as her family becomes your own. The art work is charming and original to match this unique creation. I could not put it down!

When I included this and Maus 1 & Maus 2 I was informed that they are not grpahic novels and that I could not have one free. AMAZING! Of course after I asked for the distric manager's name/numner there was a sudden change of heart BUT NOT a good instore experience from BORDERS at ALL. The GRAPHIC NOVEL is great. Borders are not.

THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS brings together in one softbound volume two graphic novels published earlier in English (translated from French): PERSEPOLIS 1 - THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD, and PERSEPOLIS 2 - THE STORY OF A RETURN. As a single volume, Ms. Satrapi's work reads as a seamless story of an Iranian woman's maturation from a young girl in the Shah's (and Ayatollah Khomeini's) Iran to her high school years in Austria, back to the Iran attacked by Saddam Hussein and then transformed into a fundamentalist Islamic state, and finally back again to Europe as a young adult. The book's title is borrowed from the name of ancient Persia's ceremonial capital, dating back some 2,500 years, although Persepolis is in fact the Greek translation of the original Persian name, Parsa.

The story is strictly autobiographical, rendered as a memoir of childhood and young adulthood. Satrapi begins her story at age ten, the daughter of well-educated and well-off parents who put a premium on their daughter's religious and academic independence. Marjane's parents prod their pre-adolescent daughter toward a liberal education and encourage her to speak out. However, being a rebel against oppression in Iran leads inevitably to trouble and expulsion from school. Her parents recourse is to pack young Marjane off to Austria, isolated and alone in a foreign and far more secular culture. A series of mostly negative experiences leads her back to her homeland and an unsuccessful marriage during the early years of Iran's fundamentalist revolution with its growing religious oppression. When the young adult Marjane and her parents finally realize that her future lies not in Iran but in Europe, she heads off to France where she still lives today.

Ms. Satrapi characterizes herself as the perennial outsider wherever she lives. As a young girl, political and religious events contradict her upbringing and isolate her from the accepted beliefs and behaviors. The author conveys her childhood desperation by repeated depictions of herself talking to an ancient, white-bearded God, even cradled in his arms. She is even more the outsider in Austria, forever fumbling in her discoveries of Western culture only to become enslaved by some of its worst features. Returning to Iran after her high school years, Marjane is too Westernized to be Iranian, yet still too Iranian to feel Western. The author's journey to self-discovery and finding her true home serves as the core of her story, punctuated by her departures and arrivals. In fact, some of the most dramatic scenes in THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS take place at airports.

Satrapi's black-and-white cartooning emphasizes contrast over detail. Indeed, her drawings of people are exceedingly simplified, lacking in all except the basic features necessary to portray a character. This simplicity works, as it stands in stark contrast to the complexity of Iran's constantly changing social, political, and religious structures as well as the complexity of the author's own life and the choices she faced. These minimalist renderings, hardly more detailed than Schulz's "Peanuts" characters, create an even greater dissonance when their childlike simplicity clashes with the horrors of war and the Iranian government's seizures and executions of many of its citizens. The reader is so effectively lulled into this seemingly benign, comic book world that Satrapi's occasional dropping of an expletive into her character's thoughts or words has the force of a slap in the face. When young Marjane returns home to see the dead, braceleted arm of one of her neighborhood friends (killed by one of Saddam Hussein's missiles) extending from her wrecked home, the author resorts to the powerful simplicity of a completely black panel captioned, "No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger."

There is a natural temptation to compare PERSEPOLIS to Art Spiegelman's MAUS I and MAUS II. However, I believe the Maus books are sui generis, allegorical tales whose use of mice and cats puts Spiegelman's books in a class of their own. By contrast, Satrapi's PERSEPOLIS novels are autobiographical volumes rendered in illustrated form to trace an Iranian woman's struggle to find herself while still loving a country from which she feels irretrievably estranged. Satrapi's and Spiegelman's work complement one another and demonstrate the emotional power graphical novels are increasingly finding ways to achieve.

THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS brings together in one softbound volume two graphic novels published earlier in English (translated from French): PERSEPOLIS 1 - THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD, and PERSEPOLIS 2 - THE STORY OF A RETURN. As a single volume, Ms. Satrapi's work reads as a seamless story of an Iranian woman's maturation from a young girl in the Shah's (and Ayatollah Khomeini's) Iran to her high school years in Austria, back to the Iran attacked by Saddam Hussein and then transformed into a fundamentalist Islamic state, and finally back again to Europe as a young adult. The book's title is borrowed from the name of ancient Persia's ceremonial capital, dating back some 2,500 years, although Persepolis is in fact the Greek translation of the original Persian name, Parsa.

The story is strictly autobiographical, rendered as a memoir of childhood and young adulthood. Satrapi begins her story at age ten, the daughter of well-educated and well-off parents who put a premium on their daughter's religious and academic independence. Marjane's parents prod their pre-adolescent daughter toward a liberal education and encourage her to speak out. However, being a rebel against oppression in Iran leads inevitably to trouble and expulsion from school. Her parents recourse is to pack young Marjane off to Austria, isolated and alone in a foreign and far more secular culture. A series of mostly negative experiences leads her back to her homeland and an unsuccessful marriage during the early years of Iran's fundamentalist revolution with its growing religious oppression. When the young adult Marjane and her parents finally realize that her future lies not in Iran but in Europe, she heads off to France where she still lives today.

Ms. Satrapi characterizes herself as the perennial outsider wherever she lives. As a young girl, political and religious events contradict her upbringing and isolate her from the accepted beliefs and behaviors. The author conveys her childhood desperation by repeated depictions of herself talking to an ancient, white-bearded God, even cradled in his arms. She is even more the outsider in Austria, forever fumbling in her discoveries of Western culture only to become enslaved by some of its worst features. Returning to Iran after her high school years, Marjane is too Westernized to be Iranian, yet still too Iranian to feel Western. The author's journey to self-discovery and finding her true home serves as the core of her story, punctuated by her departures and arrivals. In fact, some of the most dramatic scenes in THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS take place at airports.

Satrapi's black-and-white cartooning emphasizes contrast over detail. Indeed, her drawings of people are exceedingly simplified, lacking in all except the basic features necessary to portray a character. This simplicity works, as it stands in stark contrast to the complexity of Iran's constantly changing social, political, and religious structures as well as the complexity of the author's own life and the choices she faced. These minimalist renderings, hardly more detailed than Schulz's "Peanuts" characters, create an even greater dissonance when their childlike simplicity clashes with the horrors of war and the Iranian government's seizures and executions of many of its citizens. The reader is so effectively lulled into this seemingly benign, comic book world that Satrapi's occasional dropping of an expletive into her character's thoughts or words has the force of a slap in the face. When young Marjane returns home to see the dead, braceleted arm of one of her neighborhood friends (killed by one of Saddam Hussein's missiles) extending from her wrecked home, the author resorts to the powerful simplicity of a completely black panel captioned, "No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger."

There is a natural temptation to compare PERSEPOLIS to Art Spiegelman's MAUS I and MAUS II. However, I believe the Maus books are sui generis, allegorical tales whose use of mice and cats puts Spiegelman's books in a class of their own. By contrast, Satrapi's PERSEPOLIS novels are autobiographical volumes rendered in illustrated form to trace an Iranian woman's struggle to find herself while still loving a country from which she feels irretrievably estranged. Satrapi's and Spiegelman's work complement one another and demonstrate the emotional power graphical novels are increasingly finding ways to achieve.

Last night I had the opportunity to watch Persepolis, a movie based on graphic novels by French based Iranian author Marjane Satrapi that I had read before as well...

Overall, the movie was not bad although it had several historical errors and many shortcomings which I am going to talk about in this entry. If you're informed enough about Iran, this can be a refreshing look at things but if not, you got to read a bit more before seeing this movie.

The first 20 minutes of the film is to bash the former Shah of Iran and his late father Reza Shah the great as most ex-Communists and leftists do these days and mislead the viewers to believe that Reza Shah the great was a product of British control over Iran at the time which is an utter nonsense and it just goes to repeat the same old cliche of conspiracy theorists in the Iranian society. Yes, the vast majority of Iranians still believe that British had something to do with installing Reza Shah to power and they're unable to see the facts of the past and accept that Reza Shah was not installed by the Brits, yet he disliked the colonial powers and was an extreme nationalist who cared for nothing but his own shattered country. The other shortcoming of this animated film was to repeat the same terrible anti-Shah nonsense that you can hear in most Marxist-Islamist circles today. The first 20-30 minutes were badly wasted to tell the clueless western viewer that the Shah was wrong to prosecute the Stalin supported Azeri separatists of Iran in 1946-47 who had orders from Kremlin to disintegrate Iran from within. Yes, according to Ms. Satrapi's accounts, it was okay for a Stalinist group to seize parts of Iran but it was wrong for the government to stop them. One has to remember that Ms. Satrapi basically comes from a Communist family where his uncles and father are/were proudly anti-Shah Marxist activists.

What disturbed me most through out the entire movie was the fact that author really failed to mention the source of oppression in post-revolution Iran which is/was Islamofascism and the mullahs who enforce that ideology. No mention of Khomeini in the movie is a mystery to me. Ms. Satrapi portrayed the late Shah as a commie-hating brutal dictator, yet she definitely failed to show who the real evil was represented by in post-revolution Iran. Yeah, I saw the moral police behavior towards western clothing or late night parties but who enforced that? Satrapi failed to tell the viewer. If I wasn't from that country or didn't know much, I'd not be able to guess who enforced a ban on alcohol or western music.

The graphic novels which this animated movie is based on are truly reflective of the lives of many Iranians who like Ms. Satrapi suffered a a lot but again one has to remember that the story told by the author represents a tiny minority of the Iranian people. And the novels are the memoirs of one specific person and don't really tell us the whole story and I, for one, didn't expect her to talk about my story or stories of others. Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi and for that, it is nothing special. She got to go to Europe because her family could afford it while me and tons of people like me had to suffer under the war of the cities and put up with the Islamic regime oppressive system. She got to leave Iran in mid 1990s again when she got depressed after a short time living under the mullah's rule but millions and millions of us had no choice but to stay there and soldier on. Persepolis animated movie is just about Ms. Satrapi's complicated life and has nothing to do with the vast majority of the people held hostage by the Islamic regime of Iran. Kudos to her for making money by selling her story but it really doesn't change much for those who still live inside of the country and have to suffer a great deal due to the mistakes Ms. Satrapi's communist father and uncles made in pre-revolution eras. You need to be informed about the history of Iran before watching any Iranian related movie, otherwise you might run a risk of being misled or misinformed.

At the end, I'd give Persepolis 2.5 stars out of 5. It doesn't get any better!

Last night I had the opportunity to watch Persepolis, a movie based on graphic novels by French based Iranian author Marjane Satrapi. Overall, the movie was not bad although it had several historical errors and many shortcomings which I am going to talk about in this entry. If you're informed enough about Iran, this can be a refreshing look at things but if not, you got to read a bit more before seeing this movie.

The first 20 minutes of the film is to bash the former Shah of Iran and his late father Reza Shah the great as most ex-Communists and leftists do these days and mislead the viewers to believe that Reza Shah the great was a product of British control over Iran at the time which is an utter nonsense and it just goes to repeat the same old cliche of conspiracy theorists in the Iranian society. Yes, the vast majority of Iranians still believe that British had something to do with installing Reza Shah to power and they're unable to see the facts of the past and accept that Reza Shah was not installed by the Brits, yet he disliked the colonial powers and was an extreme nationalist who cared for nothing but his own shattered country. The other shortcoming of this animated film was to repeat the same terrible anti-Shah nonsense that you can hear in most Marxist-Islamist circles today. The first 20-30 minutes were badly wasted to tell the clueless western viewer that the Shah was wrong to prosecute the Stalin supported Azeri separatists of Iran in 1946-47 who had orders from Kremlin to disintegrate Iran from within. Yes, according to Ms. Satrapi's accounts, it was okay for a Stalinist group to seize parts of Iran but it was wrong for the government to stop them. One has to remember that Ms. Satrapi basically comes from a Communist family where his uncles and father are/were proudly anti-Shah Marxist activists.

What disturbed me most through out the entire movie was the fact that author really failed to mention the source of oppression in post-revolution Iran which is/was Islamofascism and the mullahs who enforce that ideology. No mention of Khomeini in the movie is a mystery to me. Ms. Satrapi portrayed the late Shah as a commie-hating brutal dictator, yet she definitely failed to show who the real evil was represented by in post-revolution Iran. Yeah, I saw the moral police behavior towards western clothing or late night parties but who enforced that? Satrapi failed to tell the viewer. If I wasn't from that country or didn't know much, I'd not be able to guess who enforced a ban on alcohol or western music.

The graphic novels which this animated movie is based on are truly reflective of the lives of many Iranians who like Ms. Satrapi suffered a a lot but again one has to remember that the story told by the author represents a tiny minority of the Iranian people. And the novels are the memoirs of one specific person and don't really tell us the whole story and I, for one, didn't expect her to talk about my story or stories of others. Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi and for that, it is nothing special. She got to go to Europe because her family could afford it while me and tons of people like me had to suffer under the war of the cities and put up with the Islamic regime oppressive system. She got to leave Iran in mid 1990s again when she got depressed after a short time living under the mullah's rule but millions and millions of us had no choice but to stay there and soldier on. Persepolis animated movie is just about Ms. Satrapi's complicated life and has nothing to do with the vast majority of the people held hostage by the Islamic regime of Iran. Kudos to her for making money by selling her story but it really doesn't change much for those who still live inside of the country and have to suffer a great deal due to the mistakes Ms. Satrapi's communist father and uncles made in pre-revolution eras. You need to be informed about the history of Iran before watching any Iranian related movie, otherwise you might run a risk of being misled or misinformed.

At the end, I'd give Persepolis 2.5 stars out of 5. It doesn't get any better!

I began reading Marjane Satrapi's "The Complete Persepolis" after I saw the movie. However, I loved the book just as much as I loved the movie. It's a sad, gripping, first-hand look at Satrapi's in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, and her life in Vienna preceding her parents' decision to send her off at a very young age.

It's a really great tale of her life, very gripping and sad, but with hints of comedy throughout the entire tale. Some panels within the pages of this graphic novel will make you scream in laughter, but others will make your heart turn and twist in agony and pain for Satrapi.

I loved this book ever since I first picked it up. It is a very great reading experience, and everyone should read this graphic novel, and read the book; both are very, very wonderfully well done!

The books Persepolis: Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: Story of a Return are combined here due to the release of the animated film. It is presented as a graphic novel with illustrations.

Satrapi was born in 1969 in Iran, the only child of educated and intelligent parents who raised her to think for herself. She was surrounded by political and philosophical discussions from an early age. During her childhood she saw the take over by Islamic fundamentalists, the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Iran-Iraq war. When she was 10 she had to wear the veil to school.

At age 14 her parents decided to send her to live in Austria, where they had friends who could care for her, and they enrolled her in a French school. Persepolis 2 is the story of her disconnected life in Austria. Angry at misconceptions about her country, worried about her parents, and longing to fit in, she struggles a great deal.

After a betrayal by a boyfriend and an accusation by her landlady, she lives on the streets until she wakes up in hospital. She returns home, and suffers from severe depression at all the changes. Eventually she is able to adapt, meets a young man, enrolls in art college, and marries. Her independent spirit, however, ensures she will be unhappy-and she leaves for college in France after a divorce.

These books are praised for their brilliant evocation of turbulent times in a very unusual culture. The art is simple and striking.

Armchair Interviews says: This story is riveting.

The books Persepolis: Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: Story of a Return are combined here due to the release of the animated film. It is presented as a graphic novel with illustrations.

Satrapi was born in 1969 in Iran, the only child of educated and intelligent parents who raised her to think for herself. She was surrounded by political and philosophical discussions from an early age. During her childhood she saw the take over by Islamic fundamentalists, the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Iran-Iraq war. When she was 10 she had to wear the veil to school.

At age 14 her parents decided to send her to live in Austria, where they had friends who could care for her, and they enrolled her in a French school. Persepolis 2 is the story of her disconnected life in Austria. Angry at misconceptions about her country, worried about her parents, and longing to fit in, she struggles a great deal.

After a betrayal by a boyfriend and an accusation by her landlady, she lives on the streets until she wakes up in hospital. She returns home, and suffers from severe depression at all the changes. Eventually she is able to adapt, meets a young man, enrolls in art college, and marries. Her independent spirit, however, ensures she will be unhappy-and she leaves for college in France after a divorce.

These books are praised for their brilliant evocation of turbulent times in a very unusual culture. The art is simple and striking.

Armchair Interviews says: This story is riveting.

Amazingly insightful into Persian culture and the difference between the common people and the mullah elite. Satrapi is very frank, and I found myself relating to her suffering and admiring her integrity. This book was intriguing from start to finish, partially because of its comic book form. I think this would be a good book for a teenager to read to understand what life would be like in the U.S. without our personal freedoms.

I liked it more than the film, because it had a greater sense of humor

As a child Marjane Satrapi lived through the 1979 Iranian Revolution and its aftermath.

Included here are Satrapi's internationally-acclaimed graphic novels, PERSEPOLIS: The STORY Of A CHILDHOOD and PERSEPOLIS 2: The STORY Of A RETURN. Combining clear analysis with a sharp sense of humor, the first volume tells the story of Marjane and her family's experiences during the final years of the Monarchy, its downfall, and the subsequent rise of Khomeini and the Islamic Republic. A more personal volume, PERSEPOLIS 2 follows Marjane's student years in Vienna and her later return to Iran.

Together with Vincent Paronnaud, Satrapi also co-wrote and co-directed the animated film version.

"Persepolis" is a unique trip into the past by Marjane Satrapi, who uses the graphic novel approach to give us a rich narrative full of happiness, heartbreak, suspense and wicked comedy. These are her illustrated memories of her childhood in Iran during the brutal reign of the Shah and then her and her family's experiences during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and afterwards as fundementalists come to power and Satrapi's world changes forever. Like the best memoirs Satrapi's are strikingly honest and objective. This is neither a protest against Iran's system or an endorsement, it is the record of a woman's life during important historical events and how these events individually affect people, lives and personal histories. With beautiful, comic illustrations Satrapi brings her family's fascinating story to life, we see her grow-up with educated, Leftist parents who raise her knowing about the PLO, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Iran's own martyrs. They despise the U.S.-backed, or better put, the U.S.-INSTALLED regime of the Shah and passionately take to the streets to protest the Monarch. Marjane watches all this with wonderous curiosity as she imagines Marx and God debating. When the Shah falls there is cheering in the streets, but soon the country finds itself divided as the Islamic Republic is born and friends, families and loved ones are torn apart by the new way of life and a brutal war with Iraq. Satrapi chronicles all this and more, including her early years as an exile in Europe with a sharp eye for details big and small, with great humor and a style that makes this a universal story. Many of us will find ourselves relating to so much of what Marjane goes through, the way she explores her inner thoughts, worries and moments of joy is impressive because of the heart and psychological depth she displays. This edition of "Persepolis," where parts 1 and 2 are combined due to the upcoming release of the motion picture edition should be the definitive edition for readers to purchase. Once you start reading you get hooked, and there's no sense in having to look for part two when you can have the complete story here. "Persepolis" is one of the best recent memoirs about those who experienced the Islamic Revolution, and one of the best memoirs in general. Satrapi's book is also a cultural gem, because in our tense times it is important to read the stories that display the humanity of "the other side." Satrapi does not condone much of what the Islamic regime did in the years immediately following the revolution, but she also makes a point of why the revolution happened. She doesn't shy away from showing how friends of her family were tortured by the Shah's secret police, the Savak or from the fact that the Savak were trained by the CIA. In her introduction Satrapi clearly mentions that in 1953 the CIA overthrew Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, because he planned to nationalize the country's oil, and installed the Shah as supreme leader. Satrapi shows an impressive, objective look at history, something we need now more than ever when talking about the Middle East. "Persepolis" is a masterpiece, a grand effort that deserves to be read more than once.

This book collects Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Both books are graphic novels telling the true story of the author's life. Book one tells the story of her girlhood in Iran and ends when she leaves Iran to go to a boarding school in Austria. Book two picks up where book one left off, and tells the rest of her story up to the point where she leaves Iran for the second and last time. This is a great, moving story. I found myself empathizing with this girl, even though she comes from a culture nothing like mine and we have nothing in common. It obviously wasn't easy growing up a progressive girl in a represive culture. I could go on and on about the virtues of this book, but it's better if you just read it and find out for yourself. Or see the "major motion picture". (aren't all motion pictures "major"? at least according to their publicity.)

I really enjoyed this book, as demonstrated by the fact that I read it in two days. This new edition (which promotes the movie that comes out on 12/25) combines the two separate books into one volume. The story is fascinating, the drawings are alternately funny and haunting. Highly recommended for anyone interested in such topics as Iran, women and Islam or for fans of graphic novels.

As an Iranian in exile, whenever people ask me what living in Iran is really like, I lend them Satrapi's Persepolis. I cannot think of any other publication that can explain the whole thing starting from the islamic revolution up until now, as good as this book does. I recommend this book not only to those who are interested in politics, but also those who want to read a very nice comics book with a powerful plot.

It's been a long time since a book has affected me as much as Persepolis. I think it's the point of view, of a young girl growing into a young adult, that makes the story so poignant. How we come to our beliefs, how our beliefs sometimes shift, how we find ourselves making choices that don't necessarily reflect those beliefs: all of this and more is eloquently written and drawn in this memoir. If everyone who thinks people in the Middle East, or all Muslims, are our enemies would read this book, perhaps we would be able to focus on the REAL enemies of our democracy.

Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran. She watched the Islamic revolution unfold there. This graphic novel depicts her life up until the time she left Iran for good. She provides readers with a viewpoint we don't often get in our media; the views of ordinary Iranian people like her friends and family.

While there seems to be some crazy people in charge over there-the Iranian people are a lot like us; freedom-loving, culturally sophisticated, living with a government that doesn't reflect their beliefs and ideals. A whole lot like us.

So why should we allow our government to decide that it is OK to bomb Iran? Good question. Our reactionary leadership thinks that they can cook up a pretext for war against Iran's reactionary leadership. What's wrong with this picture? Can you say WMD? Ordinary people will suffer in that scenario, as usual. Iranians and Americans will die while our leaders can hide in their bomb shelters and plot WWIII.

That ain't right. Read this book. Get to know the Iranian people. Stop this escalation into madness.

i am not someone who typically enjoys 'cartoon' strips, but i could not put this book down and read it fervently. i received this book as a gift after having visited iran a couple of times, and i was interested in learning more about the history and culture. what marjiane captures of her childhood, and her evolution into adulthood, is thoughtful, amusing, heart-breaking and at times hilarious. at times she softens the brutality of her words with the humor of amusing caricatures, or sometimes the simplicity of what she sees as a child is made more stark and tragic by her drawings. her personal journey and her family's experiences during and after the revolution really give one pause. i would highly recommend this book, it is rich with humor and emotion.