out. She had married and then divorced, realising that she couldn’t possibly seal her position in society so firmly. At the margin was where she felt comfortable: commenting, rebelling, chain-smoking. She was bound for France, where she stayed, married happily and, in 2006, became a citizen. France loudly claimed her, but Iran was still home. Despite the beauty of Paris, Tehran with all its ugliness was where she would rather be. Yet in Iran now she was a Westerner, while in the West she was Iranian. Her identity risked falling between them. She wrote “Persepolis” not only to preserve her own memories of her country, pinning down who she was, but also, explicitly, to explain Iran to the West. To most Americans, it could be summed up as “veil and beard and nuclear weapon”. Its 4,000-year history, its glorious poets and philosophers, were ignored. Worse, there was no understanding of ordinary Iranians. They were not dead-eyed terrorists or donkey-riding peasants from the Dark Ages. Most lived in cities, modern people resisting every day the rulers who did not represent them. Freedom she was sure, must arrive in the end. Her first book began with herself as a silent, angry child in a veil. The cover of “Woman, Life, Freedom”, her last, showed a crowd of women with one supportive, half-hidden man. No woman wore a veil. They were shouting, and their splendid, cascading hair was on fire. The fiercest voice is now missing. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//obituary/2026/06/11/marjane-satrapi-set-out-to-correct- the-wests-views-of-iran
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