Reviews

Persepolis 2: Storia di un ritorno by Gianluigi Gasparini, Agnès Nobecourt, Cristina Sparagana, Marjane Satrapi

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whereisalina's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

zmoats's review against another edition

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5.0

I mistakenly thought Satrapi's ability to sustain the interest of the first part of the memoir would wear off as we take the journey with her out of childhood into adulthood - I was dead wrong. In fact, I do not hesitate to say that this is a perfect follow-up to the first book. While the story itself of Persepolis 2 may not be as tight as the it's predecessor, it more than makes up that ground as Satrapi turns further inward toward her own feelings and thoughts. There were also numerous panels in this book whose illustrations I still find myself imagining. The connections Satrapi draws to the form of the first novel reminded me of how movies use similar images to form connections between two disparate moments in time. It is a technique best used sparingly and subtlety - both of which Satrapi refines. Needless to say, you should absolutely give both Persepolis 1 and 2 a chance, regardless of how you feel about graphic novels.

outoftheblue14's review against another edition

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5.0

I was awaiting eagerly the possibility to read Persepolis 2: Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi, the second volume of her autobiography in the form of graphic novels.

In Persepolis, we left Marjane as she was about to leave Iran for Austria to attend a French secondary school. As Persepolis 2 opens, she has just arrived in Austria, where she lives first in a boarding house run by Catholic nuns and them in a flat shared with other eight gay men. Marjane feels uneasy in Austria, but manages to find a niche for herself with friends and acquaintances who share her feelings about their place in the world.

After a series of unfortunate events cause her to live in the streets for three months, at the age of nineteen Marjane decides to go back to her native Iran. There, she has to wear a headscarf and accept a society strictly divided by sex and ruled by fundamentalism. However, guided by the example of her strong grandmother, she starts to test the limits of that fundamentalism, both in the streets and in the classrooms of the art school she attends. She comes to understand that "one person leaving her house while asking herself, 'is my veil in place?' no longer asks herself 'where is my freedom of speech?'". After marrying the wrong man and giving up her dream to find a place for herself in Iranian society, she decides to leave Iran for good.

I found the second part of Marjane Satrapi's autiobiography in form of a graphic novel to be even more entertaining and pleasant to read than the first one, probably because of the emphasis given to more "adult" themes.