Work · no recording we hold

The Complete Persepolis

It explains. Hardcover files this book as non-fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.

Not enough to go on

Every book we have judged on how far the recording outruns the page: 201 of them, the page's answer at the left-hand end and the recording's at the right. Marked for scale: All the Light We Cannot See, To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This one is not placed: we have no audio case for it.
Every call we have made is on that line. This one is not: with no audio case for it, there is nowhere honest to put it.

There is no English audiobook of this on sale in the shop we search (Audible’s British one), so there is no listen to weigh the page against. That is a fact about what has been recorded, and it says nothing against the book.

What you can do If you want this book in English, the page is the way in for now. There is no format to choose between yet.

Last searched Audible UK ·

Length does not decide this

about 11 hours to readabout 9 hours to readabout 7 hours to readabout 5 hours to readabout 4½ hours to read

The reading time is our estimate: 341 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 341 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 341 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 341 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 341 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.

Reading load against listening load

Every book we hold placed by how much work it asks on the page, left to right, against how much it asks in your ears, bottom to top: 222 of them. Easy both ways is the bottom left corner, hard both ways the top right; above the dashed line the ears work harder, below it the page does. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one is in the top 30% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the middle 40% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears.
The dashed line is where a book would be same effort either way. This one sits on that line (the format is not fighting you either way), between the bottom 34% and the top 23% of our shelf of books for extra work in audio.
On the page0.21
In your ears0.20
Audio disadvantage0.03

We hold no recording of this one, so “In your ears” and “Audio disadvantage” are what we would expect of a recording of it: read off how the book itself reads, and never measured against a reading that exists.

Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the top 30% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the middle 40% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.

What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.

Every book we could measure both features on placed by pace, fast to slow, against how demanding the reviews we read found it, plain to demanding: 166 of them. The easiest listens are the bottom left corner and the hardest the top right, which is the shaded one. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one reads at about the pace of most books we hold and about as demanding as most, and neither is pushing it far from the middle of the shelf.
This one reads at about the pace of most books we hold and about as demanding as most, and neither is pushing it far from the middle of the shelf.

How the call was made

Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.

What is at stake
1.05It sits in the top 15% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: well enough regarded that a wasted first encounter costs more, so we lean towards protecting the page. Blended across 216,918 Goodreads ratings and 482 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
Evidence
0.30How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The readingnot measured: there is no recording of this one to attestThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 482 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchnot measured: with no recording, there was nothing to matchThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it getsWe are also missing something we treat as essential: no English audiobook on sale in the shop we search; too little of the record overall.

What each crowd complains about

We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 3 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.

What the two crowds said

4.41+1.01 sdGoodreads
the book itself
Goodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
56%5 stars: 56 per cent, 121,284 ratings
33%4 stars: 33 per cent, 70,875 ratings
9%3 stars: 9 per cent, 19,112 ratings
2%2 stars: 2 per cent, 3,782 ratings
1%1 stars: 1 per cent, 1,865 ratings

216,918 ratings

The series

Persepolis

Finished

4 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 2003 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.

From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.