Persepolis was the ancient capital of Persia - now Iran - and it seems that, in choosing this title for her graphic novel, recently animated for film, Satrapi intended to invoke a sense of her country's past, in the days when it was renowned as a centre of civilisation.

Her account of its more recent history is in stark contrast to this. Beginning in 1980, as the effects of the Iranian Revolution of the previous year are starting to be felt in public life, it chronicles the gradual shutting down of individual freedoms, after the initial euphoria that followed the expulsion of the Shah. The first chapter, entitled The Veil, shows the ten year-old narrator and her classmates being forced to wear the headscarf at school. Later episodes depict the author and her family having to curb their Westernised behaviour, as the edicts of the religious police are rigorously enforced. After the war with Iraq begins, the mood becomes even more repressive, with tens of thousands being executed for their political beliefs, and many fleeing the country - as Satrapi herself did briefly.

Against this grim backdrop, people still try to live their lives, with the author - by this time a free-spirited young woman - falling foul of the authorities for her refusal to conform. All this is conveyed with a great deal of wry humour, through Satrapi's expressive drawings, combined with speech bubbles. The result is a tour de force to rival Maus, Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking graphic novel about the rise of Nazism.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Vintage, £7.99

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