Marjane Satrapi, author 'Persepolis', dies at 56

French-Iranian author and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, best known for her acclaimed graphic memoir Persepolis, has died at the age of 56.

Her death was announced on Thursday by the office of French President Emmanuel Macron.

According to a family statement sent to AFP, Satrapi died of “sadness” a little more than a year after the death of her husband, Mattias Ripa.

Macron paid tribute to Satrapi, saying “her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and an artist devoted to freedom, whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international renown”.

Born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran, Satrapi came from a politically active family and moved to Austria as a teenager after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

She later returned to Iran to study visual communications at the University of Tehran before settling in France in 1994.

Her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, first published in 2000, explored her childhood during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.

The book later became an award-winning animated film that received an Oscar nomination in 2008.

“I come from a country where a woman is worth half a man,” she told Variety in 2007.

In 2024, Satrapi refused France’s Legion of Honour, criticising the country’s support for democracy movements in Iran.