Persepolis

Her books are enjoyable, although that is certainly a strange word to use to describe books that tell about murders, torture, and the repression of an entire population, particularly women. But Satrapi has such a sly sense of humor that she makes her points with bitter laughter in the background. That's the only way to bear oppression, she says in some of her graphic stories.Her second book tells about her childhood as an upper-class girl whose family, many of whom were communists, opposed the Shah. She and they supported the revolution, which they thought would bring about democracy or the rule by the proletariat, only to find that the result was a fundamentalist Islamic republic that was more repressive than they could have imagined.Then, in 1981, Iraq attacked Iran and the fundamentalist Iranian Government urged everyone to fight and become martyrs. During the eight-year war, the Iraqi military killed 1 million Iranians. But at one point when Saddam Hussein wanted to end the war, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini refused because it had become a holy war. Teachers held daily sessions in which children were supposed to hit themselves to show their sympathy with the martyrs.

Apparently Satrapi was always rebellious and full of pranks that could have landed her in jail. She even struck a teacher who treated her badly. Her parents sent her to Austria because they feared she was likely to wind up imprisoned, raped, and executed if she stayed in Iran (it's against the law to execute a virgin in Iran, so jailers rape virgins before they kill them).