Comic book author Marjane Satrapi passed away last week in Paris at age 56, just before conflict between Israel and her native Iran re-erupted. While her work has enjoyed enduring fame, the present conflict has made it more relevant than ever before.

Satrapi’s work is unique for how it weaves her own personal story with Iran’s history and politics. In her comics and film Persepolis, for instance, there is a scene where the Iranian officer Reza Khan overthrows the Qajar Shah after the First World War, seeking to establish a secular republic. The British, who had installed monarchies in Iraq and Jordan, encouraged him instead to declare himself Shah in 1925. This gave rise to the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran, which would in turn be overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Satrapi’s characters inhabit these historical moments. They are influenced by them, and their lives are determined by their outcomes. Her stories are built on a deep understanding of Iranian resentment of foreign interference, told through a bold, monochrome comic format. But they haven’t always been to everyone’s liking.

Her comic Persepolis in particular is not without controversy. Critics claim it contains historical inaccuracies, but this expectation of total accuracy is a common misunderstanding of Satrapi. She was not a historian, she was an author who drew on her own experiences of life both within Iran and outside it.

I have first-hand experience of the controversy her work can cause. When I was teaching a History of Iran class at Bogazici University, in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2007, I assigned Persepolis. Students affiliated with the campus Communist party objected to me........

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