If possible, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return was better than Satrapi’s first graphic novel Persepolis: A Story of Childhood. Don’t get me wrong, they were both great and the first one’s wit and humor (from the perspective of a 10-year-old) was better placed and timed, but this novel just dealt with adult issues an early 20s individual faces and thus I identified more with it.
I sill say, however, that this book provided less history and explanation about the revolution and continuing Islamization of Iran than the first and focused more on the challenges Marjane and other young women faced as women under the new rule from the stricter veiling and gender segregation to the lack of freedom of mobility and education for women and mandatory military service for young men.
I flew through this book and will need to read it again to savor more of the story. When I say I flew, I mean I read it in just over an hour. I read every bit of it and even glorified in the illustration a few times, but I’m moving on to 
This was an astoundingly beautiful novel and the more I think on and reflect about it, the more I probably should bump it up to five stars on Goodreads rather than just four, but as I think those are mostly arbitrary I doubt I will do it. The ending, although, beautiful, was just a bit lackluster to me. This some how marred the overall beauty of the novel, even though the only thing it really did wrong was not give me the satisfying ending that I wanted.
I’m not sure about the rest of you, but in High School, one of my APÂ literature courses required that we learn a portion of the prologue in Middle English. Now rather than delight you all with a ridiculous video of me reciting it (I can still do the first 10-15 lines or so from memory), you’ll just have to use your imagination.
After my amazing luck with John Boyne’s