Don't say "it's like Maus," please.
I'm certain everyone compares this to Maus, but that's not helpful (or fair or accurate). Maus is partly about its author, but it's mainly about the author's father and experiences. Persepolis is mainly about the author's experiences with some context about the author's family (as part of her understanding her self and her experiences). One can't win with comparisons like that: if I say I "liked" this one more than Maus, or if I say I "liked" Maus more than this, thousands will revolt and burn my home with torches (or torch my home with burns, depending on how clever they are). So one can't win, especially since the works are rather different. This was worth reading, certainly, perhaps even more frighteningly so since one gets the impression the same sort of thing is happening in its own way in America more than what occurred in Maus. Perhaps many will likewise dismiss such an idea: I'll be wrong, gladly, then. It's almost more like Huckleberry Finn than Maus, but again, that's a comparison that doesn't help anything or anyone, so I'll leave off. It's a great insider view of what happened then, even if the narrator has just as much experiential uncertainty of what to truly make of it all as the audience. Who is the hero of the story? What belief system is the way to go? We think we know the answer along with Marji, but something will change the next day, one of her parents will reveal a new facet, and we are just as confused as before. I didn't get the impression the work is "prescient" as Time did, since she was recalling her past, nor did I consider it a "condemnation of the human cost of fundamentalism" (I thought she was showing us the "human cost of Islam," but apparently I was wrong). Even so, if someone so bemused as I could think it was worth reading, surely those of you who could read it more accurately would consider it worthwhile as well.