Iranian comic-book writer. Satrapi was sent to Europe while she was only 14 and now lives in Paris. She has been writing and illustrating children's books for years. But in Persepolis, named after Iran's ancient capital, she told her own story. The first three volumes, which began to be released in 2000, have sold over one hundred thousand combined copies in France and have won critical acclaim. Persepolis, is narrated through the eyes of a child and is the ideal way for the uninitiated reader to absorb the Iranian history, to date. The book has been translated into German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. The English edition came out in 2003. On 14 May 2003, when she arrived at JFK Airport in New York, Marjane was so interrogated and fingerprinted by the customs officials that she was drained and shaken and in the corridor of the airport she fainted - an experience she never had before in her life. She joked: I am part of the 'axis of evil.' Wide-eyed Marjane Satrapi who is becoming the world's most important graphic novelist was born in the family of upper-class leftist at Rasht, near Caspian Sea and grew up in Tehran. She speaks Persian, German, French and English.