Remembering Marjane Satrapi: 5 books like ‘Persepolis’ that combine art, exile and political defiance | Today’s news
French-Iranian writer Marjane Satrapi has died aged 56 “of grief” just over a year after losing her husband and the love of her life, Mattias Ripa, a member of her close circle, told AFP on Thursday.
“Marjane Satrapi died of grief just over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” they said in a statement sent to AFP.
She permanently transformed the landscape of graphic literature with Persepolis, her monochrome masterpiece that took an intimate, rebellious childhood in revolutionary Iran and turned it into a universal fable of survival, identity and exile.
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“I think the problem with the world today is that people don’t know each other… They think that the country is equal to its government,” Satrapi remarked as Persepolis took Cannes by storm.
To honor her immense legacy of mixing sharp political defiance with deeply human vulnerability, here are 5 books that share the DNA of Persepolis:
The best we could do from Thi Bui
If Persepolis intrigued you about how family dynamics survive the collapse of a nation, Thi Bui’s illustrated memoir is a must-follow.
Story line: Bui chronicles his family’s daring escape from South Vietnam in the 1970s and their subsequent journey to build a new life in America.
Why it fits: Similar to Satrapia’s relationship with her parents, Bui explores severe intergenerational trauma passed down from parent to child. It’s an incredibly moving, visually stunning exploration of what it means to be a refugee and a daughter.
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Palestine by Joe Sacco
Where Satrapi uses black humor and memoir, Joe Sacco uses rigorous, immersive comics journalism to document conflict zones.
Story line: Based on several months of interviews and first-hand experience in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, Sacco captures the granular reality of everyday life under military occupation.
Why it fits: For readers who appreciated how Persepolis humanized a region often oversimplified or flattened by standard news headlines, Palestine sets the gold standard for using a graphic format to give a voice to the deaf.
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle
Satrapi famously left a restrictive regime to find her footing in Europe; Canadian animator Guy Delisle does the exact opposite and travels to one of the most closed societies on Earth.
Story line: Delisle secures a rare work visa to live in the North Korean capital for several months to oversee an animation project documenting the bizarre, tightly controlled nature of daily life in the totalitarian state.
Why it fits: Delisle opts for a very similar black-and-white, minimalist art style, balancing absurdist humor with the stark, chilling reality of state-enforced conformity.
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Maus by Art Spiegelman
You can’t fully appreciate modern graphics memory without reading a book that proved the medium’s ability to handle deep historical tragedy.
Story lineSpiegelman interviews his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.
Why it fits: Satrapi herself has often cited Maus as the work that made her realize she could tell her own story through comics. Both books strip away the grandeur of history books to focus on the deeply intimate, gritty, and sometimes unflattering details of human survival.
Woman, Life, Freedom coordinated by Marjane Satrapi
To truly say goodbye to Satrapi, check out her last major collaborative work, recently released in the wake of the historic protests in Iran.
Story line: Satrapi assembled an elite group of international journalists, artists, activists and historians to create a graphic anthology documenting the uprising sparked in 2022 by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Why it fits: Brings Satrapi’s life’s work full circle. Decades after she wrote about her own childhood rebellion in Tehran, she used her global platform to uplift a new generation of Iranian women fighting for exactly the same freedoms.
