Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi has died at the age of 56. The Iranian-French author’s cause of death has not been made public. “Her passing marks the loss of a leading figure in French culture and a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim,” French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said Thursday. Satrapi was born in Iran, later leaving for Austria at 14 to study before moving to France, where she wrote her most famous work. The graphic novel Persepolis follows a woman whose life closely mirrors the author’s, tracing her through the first 10 years of her life under the shah’s rule, from before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 to the Iran-Iraq War. The book was published in French in 1994 and in English in 2003, selling millions of copies and offering people in the West a window into Iranian life. After the book’s release, Satrapi said, “Even basic human rights, they deny us. You don’t have the right to dance, you don’t have the right to sing, you don’t have the right to do this, you don’t have the right to do that.”
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