Book Review: Persepolis 2

Persepolis 2

Marjane Satrapi

From goodreads:

In Persepolis, heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day,” Marjane Satrapi dazzled us with her heartrending memoir-in-comic-strips about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Here is the continuation of her fascinating story. In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of belonging.

Finding that she misses her home more than she can stand, Marjane returns to Iran after graduation. Her difficult homecoming forces her to confront the changes both she and her country have undergone in her absence and her shame at what she perceives as her failure in Austria. Marjane allows her past to weigh heavily on her until she finds some like-minded friends, falls in love, and begins studying art at a university. However, the repression and state-sanctioned chauvinism eventually lead her to question whether she can have a future in Iran.

As funny and poignant as its predecessor, Persepolis 2 is another clear-eyed and searing condemnation of the human cost of fundamentalism. In its depiction of the struggles of growing up—here compounded by Marjane’s status as an outsider both abroad and at home—it is raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

My Thoughts:
I enjoyed this book just as much as the first book, Persepolis. In this second book, we see what life was like for Marjane after she leaves Iran for a safer life in Vienna. However, she is met with a whole slew of new and different difficulties being an outsider and trying to fit in. I really feel bad for Marjane as she left Iran for a better life and it really just ended up messing with her head more than it helped anything. She returns to Iran and has to overcome a lot of issues with drugs, alcohol, trust, among other things, and in the end her talent and creativity lead her to write and illustrate books and become a bestseller. She's overcome a lot in her life, but through these books, has been able to grasp a better perspective on how her life unfolded.