Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi was born in in Iran, on the edge of the Caspian Sea. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the Lycée Français, before leaving for Vienna and, later, Strasbourg to study Decorative Arts.  In 1997, Satrapi moved to Paris, where she met Christophe Blain, who brought her into l’Atelier des Vosges, home to many of France’s celebrated “new wave” of comic book artists. There, she regaled her fellow artists with amazing stories of her family—stories of dethroned emperors, suicidal uncles, state- sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution—in short, the details of daily life in contemporary Iran. After listening to her stories and seeing her drawings, they kept asking why she was waiting to put her life in the pages of a comic book.  Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s youth in Iran in the 1970s and 80s, of living through the Islamic Revolution and the war with Iraq.