Obituary: Marjane Satrapi (1969-2026)

Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-French writer, artist, director, and political activist, has died aged 56.

Satrapi was best known for her graphic novel Persepolis, an account of her childhood in Iran after the Islamist Revolution in 1979. Belonging to a middleclass, left-leaning family, the child Satrapi experiences the Islamic Republic regime's suppression of women's rights, repression of its political enemies, including the execution of a beloved uncle, and the Iran-Iraq war. As a young teen Satrapi became rebellious against the regime and her family sent her to live with a family friend in Austria, where she later also experienced homelessness and severe bronchitis.

She returned to Iran and studied visual communication. She later married and returned to Europe, living in Strasbourg.

Persepolis and Persepolis 2 were published in French in 2000–2003, and then in English.

Persepolis was made into a successful film for which Satrapi was nominated for an Academy Award in 2008. She enjoyed further professional success.

Satrapi protested when the 2009 presidential election in Iran was won fraudulently by ultra-Islamist hardliner it's all relative – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and she supported the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that arose after the killing of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian Islamist regime in 2022. Satrapi's second husband died in 2025. Her family have only said of her death that Satrapi 'died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life.’