The author of Persepolis, a cult comic book in which she tells her story and that of Iran, has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities for being “an essential voice for the defense of human rights and freedom”.
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In the 1990s, years after the Islamic revolution broke out in Iran, a young woman named Marjane Satrapi was leaving Tehran for Europe because her parents wanted her to be educated outside an increasingly oppressive country, where women were forced to wear the veil, freedoms were restricted and almost everything was forbidden. Almost everything was persecuted. Marji, as she was called at home, arrived in France in 1994. She left her parents and grandmother behind. She never returned.
Her exile, the hard beginnings in a foreign country while her own is cracking, was told in Persepolis, a cult comic book in which she tells her story, the story of Iran, and the work that made her known.
The writer, cartoonist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (Rasht , 1965) has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2024 for being “an essential voice for the defense of human rights and freedom”, as announced by the jury on Tuesday in Oviedo.
“Marjane Satrapi is a symbol of civic engagement led by women,” says the Princess of Asturias jury. “For her audacity and artistic output, she is considered one of the most influential people in the dialogue between cultures and generations. The award wishes to highlight Marjane Satrapi’s talent for reinventing the relationship between art and communication, as in her graphic novel Persepolis, in which she exemplarily captures the quest for a more just and inclusive world.”
