Satrapi's voice is very much her own, and the way the clash between European and Middle Eastern culture has played out in her life makes for compelling reading. What her book lacks, though, is perspective on the cultural revolution in which she and her circle lived (and sometimes died). She takes it as a given that Iran's public culture is repressive, and that anything goes in Europe and America, but she doesn't spend much time considering how they got that way, or how the Iranian divide between "official representation" and "the real life of the people" came to be. Too often, Persepolis 2 is more interesting for the circumstances of its teller than for its actual telling. Its flatness serves Satrapi's intentions as a visual artist, but there's not much depth to its narrative, either.