Marjane Satrapi, author of comic-book memoir Persepolis, dies aged 56

Paris: Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French author whose graphic novel series Persepolis introduced millions of readers to the struggles of ordinary Iranians during the turbulent years around the Islamic Revolution, has died at 56.

The office of President Emmanuel Macron of France announced her death in a statement Thursday, but did not specify where, when or how she died.

“Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” the statement said.

With the publication of Persepolis in the early 2000s, Satrapi became one of the best-known exponents of a form of graphic novel — influenced by Art Spiegelman’s Maus — that combined political history and memoir.

The protagonist, Marji, was depicted living through some of the most difficult years of Iranian history, closely mirroring Satrapi’s own life.

Both author and character were born in Iran in 1969. Both were about 10 when the shah was overthrown. Both lived through the rise of the clerics and the horror of the Iran-Iraq war, and both left the country at 14 to study in Austria.

In 1994, Satrapi moved to Paris, where she wrote the Persepolis series. The books were published in France from 2000 to 2003; the first volume of an English translation was published in 2003, and the second volume was released a year later.

Millions of readers bought the books, which became a popular school assignment and among the widest-read works to explore the interior lives of modern Iranians. The series was adapted into a 2007 film that was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated feature.

Persepolis, author Fernanda Eberstadt wrote in a New York Times review, “dances with drama and insouciant wit”, its inky black-and-white drawings modelled on contemporary comics and Persian miniatures.

Not quite two decades later, Satrapi set to work documenting another tumultuous moment in Iranian history: the unrest in 2022 that followed the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained and accused of violating a law requiring women to wear the hijab in public.

In protest, women across Iran tore off their veils, in one of the most significant cultural and political moments in the country since the 1979 revolution.

Satrapi’s work on the subject culminated in 2024 with the release of Woman, Life, Freedom, another work of graphic non-fiction. She contributed some drawings, but told the Times that she was more of a “director” of the project, which also feat