The Complete Persepolis

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's acclaimed graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In stark, expressive black-and-white panels, Satrapi remembers herself as a precocious, outspoken child in Tehran — the daughter of politically engaged, secular parents — trying to make sense of a country transformed almost overnight by revolution, repression, and then the long war with Iraq.

This complete edition follows Marjane from that childhood through her teenage years, when her parents send her to Vienna to keep her safe, and on to her difficult return to an Iran she no longer entirely recognises. Along the way the memoir traces her struggles with identity, exile, faith, rebellion, and belonging, set against bombings, arrests, and the daily compromises of life under an authoritarian regime.

Funny, angry, and deeply humane, Persepolis pairs a child's-eye directness with an adult's political clarity. It has become one of the most widely read graphic novels in the world, a landmark work of memoir that makes recent Iranian history intimate and immediate.