Marjane Satrapi died on June 3, aged 56. A statement from friends and family, sent to the AFP newswire, said she “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life.” Ripa, a producer, actor and screenwriter, had died on April 8, 2025, Deadline reported.
Her death landed at an odd moment for the form she helped make respectable. In a June 27 piece for Salon, critic Andi Zeisler wrote that nonfiction graphic novels are now the third best-selling genre in North America, behind only general fiction and romance. They win Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. They are adapted into movies and streaming shows. They are also among the most popular titles in elementary-school libraries.
The book that opened the door
Satrapi was nine when the Shah fell and Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979. She recounted growing up in Iran during and after that revolution in her 2003 memoir “Persepolis.” Zeisler called it one of the genre’s first blockbuster hits and one of the most widely read, and most widely challenged, graphic novels of all time. Satrapi turned it into an animated feature in 2007, co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2008 Academy Awards.
The fight over the book has not ended. Zeisler pointed to “Wake Now in the Fire,” published earlier this year, which tells the story of an attempt to pull “Persepolis” from Chicago public schools and the student uprising that followed. A graphic memoir about a banned graphic memoir.
One of five for the year
Zeisler’s list of five memoirs from the first half of 2026 starts with “Anxietyland” by Gemma Correll. The British comic artist’s work has turned up in The New Yorker and on tote bags that read “Pugs Not Drugs.” Her 2018 was rough. Project deadlines gave way to insomnia, panic attacks and heavy drinking, and she eventually checked herself into a hospital.
The book follows her through a shy childhood, a young adulthood in which alcohol became an all-purpose balm, and the breakdown that followed. Correll frames it as a trip through Anxietyland, the world’s most unpleasant theme park. Its rides include the Emotional Rollercoaster, the Worry-Go-Round and Hangxiety Falls. The two-color pages use blue for the past and red for her way out, which involved outpatient talk therapy, mental health walks and two needy pugs. At 400 pages, Zeisler wrote, it seems to fly by.
Sources
- The best graphic memoirs of the year (so far) offer hope and humanity
- Marjane Satrapi Dead: Iranian French 'Persepolis' Director Was 56
Sources
- Marjane Satrapi Dead: Iranian French 'Persepolis' Director Was 56
- Remembering Marjane Satrapi – Penguin Random House Higher …
