Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is a contemporary graphic novelist, illustrator and children’s book author. She grew up in Tehran in a progressive family. She attended the Lyce Franais there and witnessed, as a child, the growing oppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and the first years of the Iran-Iraq war.

In 1983, at the age of 14, Satrapi was sent to Vienna, Austria, by her parents in order to flee the Iranian regime. According to her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, she lived there during her high school years, returning to Iran for college.

Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed, autobiographical graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe in an intelligent and engaging portrait of everyday life. Persepolis won the Angoul me Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoul me International Comics Festival. She has also contributed to the Op-Ed section of The New York Times.

Persepolis was adapted into an animated film of the same name, which in May 2007 debuted at the Cannes Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize. Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.