This much anticipated new work by Iranian cartoonist Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Persepolis 2) is now on our shelves. Those of you who who were -- like us -- fans of Persepolis but were subsequently disappointed -- as we were -- with rushed, lackadaisical quality of Satrapi's last work, Embroideries, and were worried that she was a "one-hit wonder" and Persepolis was all she was going to be good for can now rest assured that this is not the case: Chicken With Plums is an amazing tale that is artfully told and that leaves the reader with much to ponder. Our only gripe is with Pantheon for doing a fairly shoddy job on the printing as there are several places where her white-on-black lettering is blurred by poor attention paid somewhere in the printing process. Her work deserves better. This time around Satrapi gives us a family legend, the story of her great-uncle, a celebrated Iranian musician who gave up his life for music and love. Set in Tehran in 1958, her uncle, one of Iran’s most revered sitar players, discovers that his beloved instrument is irreparably damaged. Though he tries, he cannot find one to replace it, one whose sound speaks to him with the same power and passion with which his music speaks to others. In despair, he takes to his bed, renouncing the world and all its pleasures, closing the door on the demands and love of his wife and his four children. Over the course of the week that follows, his family and close friends attempt to change his mind, but Nasser Ali slips further and further into his own reveries that are filled with flashbacks and flash-forwards, all related in Satrapi's warm and welcoming style that, while it at first comes across as being naive in its simplicity, reveals itself to be exceptionally perceptive as it effortlessly exposes much about the workings of the human psyche.