Books
- Paperback Edition
- ISBN: 978-1-55861-557-1
- Publication Date: 01-01-2008
- Page Count: 368
- Categories: Fiction, Middle East
SHAHRNUSH PARSIPUR is the author of Touba and the Meaning of Night, among many books. Born in Iran in 1946, she began her career as a fiction writer and a producer at Iranian National Television and Radio. She now lives in exile in California. www.shahrnushparsipur.com
Touba and the Meaning of Night
Translated by Havva Houshmand & Kamran Talattof. Afterword by Houra Yavari. Other Contributors Persis M. Karim.
A major literary event, the publication of Touba and the Meaning of Night introduces English-speaking readers to the masterpiece of a great contemporary Persian writer, renowned in her native Iran and much of Western Europe. This remarkable epic novel, begun during one of the author's several imprisonments, was published in Iran in 1989 to great critical acclaim and instant bestseller status—until Shahrnush Parsipur was again arrested a year later, and all her works banned by the Islamic Republic.
In the character of Touba, Parsipur explores the changing fortunes of Iranian women through eighty years of turbulent history. After her father's death, fourteen-year-old Touba proposes to a fifty-two-year-old relative in order to ensure her family's financial security. Intimidated by her outspoken nature, Touba's husband soon divorces her. She marries again, this time to a prince with whom she experiences tenderness and physical passion and has four children—but he proves unfaithful and unreliable. Touba is granted a divorce from him, and lives out the rest of her long life as matriarch to a changing household of family members and refugees.
Touba and the Meaning of Night explores, from a distinctly Iranian viewpoint, the ongoing tensions between rationalism and mysticism, tradition and modernity, male dominance and female will. Throughout, it defies Western stereotypes of Iranian women and Western expectations of literary form, speaking in an idiom that reflects both the unique creative voice of its author and an important tradition in Persian women's writing.
"Houshmand and Talattof have rendered a moving translation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s masterpiece. The tale combines realism with flights of fantasy in a tale set against the backdrop of modern Iranian history."
"Bold, insightful . . . a stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature."
"Parsipur's novel carries the reader on a mystical and emotional odyssey spanning eight decades of Iranian cultural, political, and religious history . . . replete with juxtapositions of mysticism and historical fact, Parsipur's novel is a rewarding and enlightening encapsulation of her country's recent past."
"[Touba and the Meaning of Night] is both a sweeping chronicle of modern Iranian history and a study of the plight of twentieth-century Iranian women."
"Shahrnush Parsipur's Touba and the Meaning of Night is considered on of the unsurpassed masterpieces of modern Persian literature."
"With America and Iran engaged in a volatile stand-off, this now banned 1989 novel by one of Iran's most distinguished writers provides profound insights into the conflict between religion and modernity in modern Persia. . . . A feminist tour de force . . . among the classics of twentieth-century Middle Eastern Literature."
"Shahrnush Parsipur makes a case against every kind of fundamentalism. But above all she narrates a great history book and a great story. Not only does she borrow the oriental coin of Sherherazade, but she also avails herself artfully of the narrative technique of Western masters from Umberto Ecco to Gabrielle García Marquez."
"Shahrnush Parsipur has achieved an unusually powerful and vivid portrait of her homeland."
"A sweeping chronicle . . . [displaying] deft utilization of magic realism and Persian myths . . . rich and well-crafted. For all fiction collections."
"Like Parsipur herself, her protagonists are women whose rebellions are not merely political but existential, against a system that denies them their individual dignity and stunts their potentials for growth."
Also Of Interest
- Sultana's Dream
- Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
- Women Without Men 2nd Edition
- Shahrnush Parsipur
NEA Grant will help fund the digitization of 15 Feminist Press classics, and the publication of three extraordinary literary works: Savage Coast by Muriel Rukeyser, Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir by Shahrnush Parsipur, and The Silent Woman by Monika Zgustova.
