Persepolis 2 (Vintage Publishing)

Here is the fascinating and equally unforgettable sequel to Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's memoir-in-comic strips of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Persepolis ended on a cliffhanger in 1984, just as fourteen-year-old Marjane was leaving behind her home in Tehran, escaping fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in the West.

Here we follow our young, intrepid heroine through the next eight years of her life: an eye-opening and sometimes lonely four years of high school in Vienna, followed aby a supremely educational and heartwrenching four years back home in Iran.

Just as funny and heartbreaking as its predecessor - with perhaps an even greater sense of the ridiculous inspired aby life in a fundamentalist state - Persepolis 2 is also as clear-eyed and searing in its condemnation of fundamentalism and its cost to the human spirit.

In its depiction of the universal trials of adolescent life and growing into adulthood - here compounded aby being an outsider both abroad and at home, and aby living in a state where you have no right to show your hair, wear make-up, run in public, date, or question authority - it's raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.