Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, has died at 58.

Marjane Satrapi, the author, artist, filmmaker, and activist behind the best-selling Persepolis series, has died at the age of 58.

A leader in both France and Iran, Satrapi lived and wrote at a cultural intersection. Raised in Tehran but educated between Vienna and Paris, her work was restlessly concerned with the politics of home.

She wrote about Iranians fighting for freedom, both at home and in the streets. She wrote about the loneliness of dislocation. And she wrote about the paradox of loving a place that can’t always love you back.

As the Times notes in a remembrance, her auto-fictional comic Persepolis “introduced millions of readers to the struggles of ordinary Iranians during the turbulent years around the Islamic Revolution.” The memoir’s first installment was published in 2000 to great acclaim. The book managed a crossover’s hat trick. Reporting from those early aughts, it was as likely to sit on an English syllabus as a cool older friend’s shelf.

The wildly popular graphic novel series was praised for being subversive, witty, and politically audacious. The story follows Marji—a scrappy, punk-loving young girl closely modeled on the author—as she comes of age and into identity during and after the velvet coup of 1979.