Remembering Marjane Satrapi: 5 books like ‘Persepolis’ that blend art, exile, and political defiance

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian author, died at 56 "out of sadness" 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 sadness a little 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

“I think that the problem of the world today is that people don't know each other... They think that a country is equal to its government,” Satrapi noted when Persepolis took Cannes by storm.

To honour her immense legacy of blending sharp political defiance with deeply human vulnerability, here are 5 books that share Persepolis's DNA:

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

If what gripped you about Persepolis was how family dynamics survive a nation's collapse, Thi Bui’s illustrated memoir is a necessary follow-up.

Storyline: Bui chronicles her family’s daring escape from South Vietnam in the 1970s and their subsequent journey to build a new life in America.

Why it fits: Much like Satrapi's relationship with her parents, Bui examines the heavy intergenerational trauma passed down from parent to child. It is an incredibly moving, visually stunning exploration of what it means to be a refugee and a daughter.

Palestine by Joe Sacco

Where Satrapi uses dark humour and memoir, Joe Sacco uses rigorous, immersive comic journalism to document conflict zones.

Storyline: Based on several months of first-hand interviews and experiences in the West Bank and the 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 humanised a region often over-simplified or flattened by standard news headlines, Palestine sets the gold standard for using graphic format to give a voice to the voiceless.

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 reverse, travelling into one of the most closed societies on Earth.

Storyline: Delisle secures a rare work visa to live in North Korea’s capital for a few months to oversee an animation project, documenting the bizarre, strictly controlled nature of daily life under a totalitarian state.

Why it fits: Delisle relies on a very similar black-and-white, minimalist artistic style and balances absurd humour with the stark, chilling reality of state-enforced conformity.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

You cannot fully appreciate the modern graphic memoir without reading the book that proved the medium could handle profound historical tragedy.

Storyline: Spiegelman interviews his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

Why it fits: Satrapi herself frequently cited Maus as the work that made her realise she could tell her own story through comic art. Both books strip away the grandiosity 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, look to her final major collaborative work, published recently, following the historic protests in Iran.

Storyline: Satrapi gathered an elite group of international journalists, artists, activists, and historians to create a graphic anthology documenting the uprising sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.

Why it fits: It brings Satrapi’s life's work full circle. Decades after writing about her own childhood rebellion in Tehran, she used her global platform to uplift a new generation of Iranian women fighting for the exact same freedoms.