Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is a French‑Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director and children's‑book author whose work bridges personal memoir and political commentary. Born on 22 November 1969 in Rasht, Iran, she spent her earliest days in Tehran where she attended the French‑language Lycée Razi and grew up in an upper‑middle‑class family active in left‑wing politics; her maternal great‑grandfather was Nasser‑al‑Din Shah, the 19th‑century Persian emperor. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent cultural repression left a deep imprint on her, especially the arrest and execution of her paternal uncle Anoosh, an experience she later transformed into powerful narrative material. At fourteen she fled to Vienna to study at the Lycée Français de Vienne, endured months of homelessness, and eventually returned to Iran to earn a master’s degree in visual communication before moving to France to attend the Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg. Her breakthrough came with the autobiographical four‑part series Persepolis, originally published in French between 2000 and 2003, which won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award and was later adapted into an animated feature that earned a historic Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, making her the first woman ever nominated in that category. Satrapi continued to expand her repertoire with the graphic novel Chicken with Plums, the award‑winning Embroideries, and the recent Woman, Life, Freedom, while also directing live‑action films such as The Voices (2014) and the biopic Radioactive (2019) about Marie Curie. A polyglot fluent in Persian, French, English, Swedish, German and Italian, she has contributed op‑eds to The New York Times and remains an outspoken activist, supporting the Mahsa Amini protests and speaking before the European Parliament on Iranian election irregularities. Her numerous honors include the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities (2024) and multiple Angoulême prizes, underscoring a career that spans more than two decades of artistic innovation and courageous storytelling.