Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French author whose graphic novel series \u201cPersepolis\u201d introduced millions of readers to the struggles of ordinary Iranians during the turbulent years around the Islamic Revolution, has died at 56.<\/p>\n
The office of President Emmanuel Macron of France announced her death in a statement on Thursday, but did not specify where, when or how she died.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer 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,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
With the publication of \u201cPersepolis\u201d in the early 2000s, Ms. Satrapi became one of the best-known<\/a> exponents of a form of graphic novel \u2014 influenced by Art Spiegelman\u2019s \u201cMaus\u201d \u2014 that combined political history and memoir.<\/p>\n The first volume of an English translation of \u201cPersepolis,\u201d Ms. Satrapi\u2019s semi-autobiographical graphic memoir, was published in 2003, a few years after the French original.Credit…Turtleback Books<\/p>\n The protagonist, Marji, was depicted living through some of the most difficult years of Iranian history, closely mirroring Ms. Satrapi\u2019s own life.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In 1994, Ms. Satrapi moved to Paris, where she wrote the \u201cPersepolis\u201d series. The books were published in France from 2000 to 2003; the first volume of an English translation was published<\/a> in 2003, and the second volume<\/a> was released a year later.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cPersepolis,\u201d the author Fernanda Eberstadt wrote<\/a> in a New York Times review of the book, \u201cdances with drama and insouciant wit,\u201d its inky black-and-white drawings modeled on contemporary comics and Persian miniatures.<\/p>\n Not quite two decades later, Ms. 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<\/a>, who had been detained and accused of violating a law requiring women to wear the hijab in public.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Protests broke out in Iran in 2022 following the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman. Ms. Satrapi\u2019s book inspired by the events, \u201cWoman, Life, Freedom,\u201d came out in 2024.Credit…Woman, Life, Freedom<\/p>\n Ms. Satrapi\u2019s work on the subject culminated in 2024 with the release of \u201cWoman, Life, Freedom,\u201d another work of graphic nonfiction. She contributed some drawings, but told<\/a> The Times that she was more of a \u201cdirector\u201d of the project, which also featured work by other artists, activists, academics and journalists.<\/p>\n \u201cEven basic human rights, they deny us,\u201d she said of the Iranian government after the book was released. \u201cYou don\u2019t have the right to dance, you don\u2019t have the right to sing, you don\u2019t have the right to do this, you don\u2019t have the right to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Marjane Satrapi was born on Nov. 22, 1969, in Rasht, near the Caspian Sea, and grew up in Tehran. She had aristocratic ancestors, and her parents were cosmopolitan leftists; her father was an engineer and her mother designed dresses.<\/p>\n They opposed the Shah and protested against his government, but were disillusioned by the political and cultural crackdown that followed the revolution and the end of his rule. Marjane\u2019s uncle was accused of being a Soviet spy, jailed and executed.<\/p>\n Marjane bridled against the new restrictions on dress and behavior. When she was 14, she hit a school principal who had tried to confiscate her jewelry, and her parents, worried for her safety, sent her to live with an Iranian family in Austria. There, she was overwhelmed by the experience of a very different world.<\/p>\n \u201cAt her nadir,\u201d Simon Hattenstone wrote in The Guardian in 2008, \u201cshe was peddling drugs, homeless, and she almost died from bronchitis. After four years in Vienna, she admitted defeat, put on her veil and returned home.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in Iran in 1989, she studied art in Tehran and had an early marriage that ended in divorce, then returned to Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cProbably I left Iran because I was not brave enough,\u201d she told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2003. \u201cI just needed to have more social freedom to be able to do my work.\u201d<\/p>\n She got a second art degree in Strasbourg, France, before moving to Paris.<\/p>\n \u201cI like living there because I can smoke everywhere, but it is going to change,\u201d she said<\/a> in 2007, around the time that smoking was banned in many public spaces in France. (Two years before, she had published an illustrated ode to smoking<\/a> in The Times.)<\/p>\n Maybe, she mused, she would move to Greece, which had yet to introduce such stringent smoking restrictions.<\/p>\n Her husband, Mattias Ripa, who helped translate \u201cPersepolis\u201d into English, died last year. Information about her survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n Ms. Satrapi wrote several children\u2019s books and other graphic novels, including \u201cChicken With Plums,\u201d the story of the death of her great-uncle, which was also turned into a film. Another of her works, \u201cEmbroideries,\u201d depicted Iranian women discussing love, sex and men over afternoon tea.<\/p>\n She directed several feature films, including \u201cThe Voices\u201d (2014), with Ryan Reynolds, and \u201cRadioactive\u201d (2019), starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie.<\/p>\n She also won acclaim as a painter and was elected in 2024 to the Acad\u00e9mie des Beaux-Arts, one of the highest honors in the French art world.<\/p>\n Though she created some of the best-known works in the graphic novel genre, Ms. Satrapi told The Times in 2007<\/a> that she never liked the category\u2019s name.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they made up this term for the bourgeoisie not to be scared of comics,\u201d she said. \u201cLike, \u2018Oh, this is the kind of comics you can read.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She wrote frequently about her perpetual sense of dislocation \u2014 living away from her home country, but thinking constantly of it.<\/p>\n