Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
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- ISBN13: 9780375714665
- Condition: New
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Product Description
In Persepolis, heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the freshest and most original life tale 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 tale. In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to start a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family tree, 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 hard homecoming forces her to confront the changes both she and her country have undergone in her absence and her bring shame on 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 like, and starts studying art at a university. But, the repression and state-sanctioned chauvinism eventually lead her to question whether she can have a future in Iran.
As amusing 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.Amazon.com Review
Alternative up the thread where her debut memoir-in-comics concluded, Persepolis 2: The Tale of a Return details Marjane Satrapi’s experiences as a young Iranian woman cast abroad by political turmoil in her native country. Older, if not exactly wiser, Marjane reconciles her upbringing in war-shattered Tehran with new surroundings and friends in Austria. Whether living in the company of nuns or as the sole female in a house of eight gay men, she makes a niche for herself with friends and acquaintances who feel equally uneasy with their place in the world.
After a series of unfortunate choices and events place her factually living in the street for three months, Marjane decides to return to her native Iran. Here, she is reunited with her family tree, whose liberalism and emphasis on Marjane’s personal worth wield as strong an influence as the eye-popping wonders of Europe. Having grown accustomed to recreational drugs, partying, and dating, Marjane now dons a veil and adjusts to a society officially divided by gender and guided by fundamentalism. Emboldened by the example of her feisty grandmother, she tests the bounds of the morality enforced on the streets and in the classrooms. With a new appreciation for the political and spiritual struggles of her fellow Iranians, she comes to know that “one person leaving her house while asking herself, ‘is my veil in place?’ no longer questions herself ‘where is my freedom of speech?’”
Satrapi’s starkly monochromatic drawing style and the keenly experimental facial expressions of her characters provide the ideal graphic environment from which to appeal to our sympathies. Bereft of fine detail, this graphic novel guides the reader’s attention as a replacement for toward a narrative rich with empathy. Don’t be fooled by the glowering self-portrait of the leader on the back flap; it’s nearly impossible to read Persepolis 2 lacking feeling warmth toward Marjane Satrapi. –Ryan Boudinot
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Persepolis 2 is everything Persepolis 1 wasn’t. In fact it’s a bit of a yawn. The leader’s tale of life as a student in Europe is ho-hum. It does pick up a bit when she returns to Iran, but never reaches the heights of the first book.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I loved Persepolis, so when I realized there was a Persepolis 2, I quickly bought a used copy from Amazon. When I received it, I was very disappointed to learn that I had already read it! Although my first book was entitled Persepolis, it contained both tales. Check your copy of Persepolis before you buy the sequel; you may have read it!
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Having been a huge fan of Marjane’s first offering, I’ve been impatiently waiting for the second (and last) volume in her graphic autobiography. The second volume retains the clever drawings, the brilliant sense of humor, the witty observations, and shows that the knack Marjane had for excellent storytelling in the first book was no manufacturing accident.
But, two problems in this book have momentously cut-rate my enjoyment of the above qualities. First, it seems that Marjane thinks that everybody is out to get her. Nuns lie to take in up racial slurs they directed towards her, her landlady wrongly accuses her of theft, her classmates look down on her because she’s Iranian, etc. And all the while, she can do no incorrect towards anyone (except for an incident in the second half of the book,) she’s permanently language out against oppression, language out for her classmates, etc. In fleeting, she is nearly an unqualified hero. This has made the tale much less believable to me. She might very well be all of these things, but I establish the way she describes herself to be very off-putting.
The second problem is one that left me bewildered.
Near the very end of the book, Marjane, after some incident with a Kuwaiti guy comments, “my uncle has told me that its like this with Arabs in all Arab countries. If you go out on the street dressed like that (she was wearing a headscarf) and drinking a coke, they reflect you’re a prostitute.”
I had to read this sentence about 20 times before I stirred on to the next frame. I wasnt sure that what I understood was what she was implying, for two reasons. First, The very huge umbrella of ‘Arab countries’ include countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon (among others, I’m sure.) where women have rights that far outweigh persons of their Iranian counterparts. In the very least, no woman is supposed to adhere to any religious dress code while being outside, so I’m not sure where did her uncle get this thought from. More importantly, I was disturbed by this comment because it seems to be doing the exact same thing that Marjane was trying to resist throughout the whole book: She was stereotyping a group of people and painting them with a very large brush. The same thing she was complaning was happening to her while she was in Europe. I reflect persons who suffer as a result of falling into a stereotyped group can be divided into persons who would be overly sensitive about it because they realize how one-sided and hurtful it could be to others, and persons who would stereotype another group to feel excellent about themselves. I dont know where Marjane falls, and i wont judge her based on one sentence in her book, but this comment made me feel like I wasted my time reading about all her struggles as a victim of stereotyping.
In any case, there is no question that Marjane is ridiculously talented. I will be looking forwards to her next book, despite the shortcomings of this one.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
A strong sequel to Satrapi’s original autobiography, Persepolis, also told in graphic novel format. In part 2, Satrapi relates her time in Vienna and her return to Iran. She grows up, in fleeting, and grapples with her exile, her nationality and universal coming-of-age struggles — from experimenting with drugs, to finding like. As in the first novel, Satrapi’s black-and-white illustrations contrast with the multi-hued complexity of the political and religious backdrop of Iranian culture.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
I call myself a history buff but in reality I really only know American history with a small knowledge of King Henry VIII. I was 18 when Iranian crisis ongoing. This book gave me a better insight to the overall issues behind this area than any additional reading I had done, which I admit is not vast. The difference here was this book laid things out in such an engaging way I was really engrossed. The leader was both straight foward and insightful, along with reasonably humorous.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5