Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

The fascinating continuation of the best-selling Persepolis.

In 1984, Marjane escapes the rise of fundamentalism and the Iran-Iraq War, beginning a new life in Vienna. Far from her family and friends, she navigates the turbulence of adolescence in exile, finding fleeting belonging among other outsiders while struggling with loneliness, identity, and displacement.

When homesickness becomes unbearable, she returns to Iran after graduating—only to confront a country, and a version of herself, irrevocably changed. Haunted by a sense of failure and alienation, she gradually rebuilds her life, forming new friendships, falling in love, and pursuing art at university. Yet the weight of repression and everyday injustice grows harder to ignore, forcing her to question whether she can truly imagine a future in the place she once called home.

Both witty and deeply moving, Persepolis 2 is a clear-eyed portrait of growing up between worlds. It captures the contradictions of exile and return with honesty and force, revealing the personal cost of political upheaval and the search for belonging in a fractured world.