Persepolis is the first graphic novel by Iranian author Marjane Satrapi. It's an autobiographical coming-of-age story. The dramatic history of Iran—the Shah's regime, the Islamic Revolution, the war with Iraq—is told through the eyes of a child. Seeking a decent secular education for their freedom-loving daughter, her parents are forced to send her abroad at age fourteen, to an Austrian lyceum. The West, so alluring from afar, reveals its ordinary face and shocks the heroine with the fragility of human ties. Having experienced love and betrayal, friendship and rejection, and nearly hitting rock bottom, Marjane is forced to return. But much has changed in her homeland. The increasingly restrictive regime of the Islamic Republic has seriously curtailed personal and public freedoms. And a few years later, Marjane leaves the country again, this time for France, where she will live forever.

Published in four volumes (2000–2003) in France, Persepolis won all sorts of laurels at professional forums (from the Angoulême Comics Festival to the Frankfurt Book Fair) and earned recognition from the general public on both sides of the Atlantic. The pinnacle of the novel's career was its adaptation as a full-length animated film in 2007, which won a special jury prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar.