Iranian writer/illustrator Marjane Satrapi is, according to Bernadette Murphy in the Los Angeles Times, "a voice calling out to the rest of us, reminding us to embrace this child's fervent desire that human dignity reign supreme." In her 2003 graphic novel, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Satrapi, who now lives in France, created an illustrated memoir of her youth in Tehran during and after the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and brought the mullahs to power. According to Murphy, Satrapi manages to leaven "poignancy with humor, to present one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day," a work that has been compared by many critics to Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking Maus, the first graphic novel to thrust that genre into the mainstream of literature.

Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel is a moving coming-of-age story as well as a vibrant and telling reminder of the costs of...