Marjane Satrapi, Voice Behind 'Persepolis,' Dies at 56

The Iranian-French graphic novelist whose memoir of revolution and girlhood became a classroom staple and an Oscar-nominated film has died, her publisher confirmed Wednesday.

Marjane Satrapi, author of the celebrated graphic novel series 'Persepolis,' died on June 4, 2026, at age 56.
Her autobiographical series, published in the early 2000s, depicted her childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.
The books were adapted into an animated film in 2007, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
'Persepolis' became one of the most widely taught graphic novels in secondary schools and universities across the English-speaking world.
Satrapi had lived and worked in Paris for much of her adult life and was also known as a filmmaker and painter.

It was a black-and-white world that most readers first stepped into — spare ink lines, a young girl in a headscarf, a city on the edge of something enormous. Marjane Satrapi built that world in the early 2000s, and it turned out to be one of the most-read graphic novels of the generation. On Wednesday, her publisher confirmed she had died. She was 56.

Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969 and grew up in Tehran during one of the most turbulent stretches of twentieth-century history. The Islamic Revolution of 1979, the subsequent crackdown on dissent, and the grinding eight-year war with Iraq all ran through her childhood — and all ran through Persepolis, the four-volume autobiographical series she began publishing in French in 2000. The English translations followed in 2003 and 2004 and found an audience that extended well beyond the literary comics crowd. Within a few years the books had landed on high school syllabi across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

The 2007 animated film adaptation, which Satrapi co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature and a Jury Prize at Cannes. It introduced the story to a second wave of readers who went back to the source material.

Satrapi had lived in Paris since her late teens, leaving Iran as a teenager at her parents' urging — a departure the books document with the kind of specific grief that made them land harder than political memoir usually does. She continued to work as a filmmaker and painter, and remained a prominent voice in French cultural life.

No cause of death had been publicly disclosed as of Wednesday evening. A full statement from her publisher was expected in the coming days.