Women Without Men

"This novel is the story of five women who escape their varied torments and convene in a garden outside Tehran. The events may or may not be the 1950s – the historical references are somewhat obscure. Parsipur had been imprisoned in 1974 under the shah, but this is the novel that landed her in jail many more times, led to the banning of all her books, and ultimately forced her to seek refugee status in the US. The most “offensive” material in the book concerns a scene in which two women discuss virginity. The novel also treats other taboo subjects like rape, honour killings and prostitution. But I wouldn’t call it a polemical text. The brutality of the women’s circumstances is not muted at all, yet there is a way in which Parsipur untethers her characters and subjects from any easily identifiable historical moment. Time collapses in this novel. One can read this as a book about Iranian women’s lives at any point in the 20th century. What is also so extraordinary about the novel is its meditative, almost mystical quality. Women Without Men is often referred to as a work of magical realism, yet Parsipur plays her magic against a blunt, sharp wit. The contrast between those two modes feels very fresh and Iranian to me."