When the news broke last week that Marjane Satrapi , the French Iranian artist best known for the groundbreaking graphic memoir Persepolis , had died at age 56, I had what turned out to be a common reaction: That’s impossible . A friend wrote to me that Satrapi seemed invincible , which feels correct—not only because of the bold vitality of her books and films and public statements but also because Persepolis is, in so many ways, about survival. A quarter century after the publication of her