Books

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  • Paperback Edition
  • ISBN: 978-1-55861-452-9
  • Publication Date: 02-15-2004
  • Page Count: 192
  • 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

more about this author

Women Without Men

A Novel of Modern Iran
Shahrnush Parsipur

Translated by Kamran Talattof & Jocelyn Sharlet. Afterword by Persis M. Karim.

Shortly after the 1989 publication of Women Without Men in her native Iran, Shahrnush Parsipur was arrested and jailed for her frank and defiant portrayal of women's sexuality. Now banned in Iran, along with the rest of this brave and prolific writer's work, this small masterpiece was eventually translated into several languages, and introduces English-speaking readers to the work of a brilliant Persian writer.

With a tone that is as stark and bold, yet magical, as its elegantly drawn settings and characters, Women Without Men creates an evocative allegory of life for contemporary Iranian women. Parsipur follows the interwoven destinies of five women—including a schoolteacher, a housewife, and a prostitute—as they arrive, by many different paths, to live in a garden on the outskirts of Tehran.

"These delightfully inventive interwoven tales of five contemporary Iranian women take on the author's world with all the grace of Calvino's 'sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness.' A masterful voice in international fiction now available to readers in the English-speaking world."

—Robert Coover, author of Briar Rose and The Public Burning