The graphic novel has become a shy literary entity, to be found either in specialist shops or lurking in the darkest corner of the book store.

Yet a subtle revolution is taking place, as the graphic novel evolves into a varied tome that when compiled by an author of great skills, becomes a veritable treasure, providing a feast for the eyes and a quench to the sated imagination.

Through Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi has succeeded in breaking into new territory – the autobiographical graphic novel – with an ease that renders the reader with a desire to never again return to written-word publications.

The opening pages commence with an astute wit that continues relentlessly throughout the two volumes, though Satrapi’s ability to convey the tragedy, futility, hypocrisy and treachery of the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, and the protagonists therein remains astounding.

As ten-year-old Marjane moves through school, so too does society move from being a liberal state to one of intense religiosity.

Yet Persepolis is more than a mere charting of the Revolution, for Satrapi takes the reader beyond the images of Ayatollahs and ardent marches, and into the lounges of ordinary Iranians.

From covert parties to the clandestine trading of Michael Jackson and Kim Wilde cassettes, the finer details of every day life are shared with a nostalgia that does not omit the closeness of death.

As the Iran-Iraq War intensifies, the now teenage Marjane is sent by her parents to live in Austria with relatives.

Ostensibly sent to avoid the misery of war, the exile becomes an exhausting fight for survival and to assimilate with her new cohorts.

Cast out from the home of her relatives, Marjane moves from residence to residence, before finally plunging to a new nadir and returning to Iran.

Once more confronting the challenge of a new culture and society, Marjane strives to fit in with her old friends, while discovering that her European outlook cannot be reconciled with the seemingly liberal demeanour of her childhood friends.

From childhood to adulthood, Satrapi excels in charting her position as a child, a daughter, a woman, and a wife in a society that evolves at a rapid pace.

Demonstrating the ability to move deftly from mocking antics to abject loss within a few frames, the black-and-white cartooning proves that graphics can move a reader – or observer – as profoundly as words.

Available in one complete volume, or two separate – Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood, and Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return – the novel provides a sumptuously witty affair that can be re-read, or dipped into in an increasingly addicted manner.

The Complete Persepolis is published by Pantheon, 352 pages, 2007. ISBN: 0375714839