The brutal rule of the Shah followed by the the medieval regime of the fundamantalist Mullahs represent a period of Iran's darkest days.

So it seems somehow fitting that Marjane Satrapi's stunning graphic novel of adolescence under two varieties of enslavery simply uses black pen and ink.

Persepolis was the glittering ceremonial capital of old Persia, a sun-dappled playground that is the very antithesis of Iran now -headlocked in a joyless vice of repressive Islamic fundamentalism.

Raised by her Marxist intellectual parents (voiced by Catherine Deneuve and Simon Akbarian), the young Marjane is a fizzing ball of cheek and curiosity.

However, her sunny outlook is darkened by tales of the oppression of the Shah and firsthand experience of his cruel regime in the shape of her jailed uncle.

Salvation appears to come with the Islamic Revolution... but it turns out to be a religiously sanctioned pretext to grind women into the dirt and ban the BeeGees. Which is, on reflection, a good thing.

An escape of sorts sees the 14-year-old Marjane sent to school in Austria but, vulnerable in a strange land, she has to battle both homesickness and casual racism.

This is far from your normal cartoon yet, rather than take the easy route and wallow in self-pity, it manages to be both harrowing and heartwarming.

There's an endearing wit at play, particularly a hilarious scene where shady peddlars hawk illegal CDs of Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd as if they were crack cocaine.

Yet it's never comfortable - we learn the Shah's torturers adapted CIA techniques that excruciatingly crushed the nerves in the soles of prisoners' feet.

After the visual and narrative pyrotechnics of previous graphic novel adaptations like Sin City or 300, this comes across as reasoned, sombre and smart and all the more powerful as a result.

Tim Evans