Women Without Men: A Novella (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation Series) (Hardcover)

~ Shahrnush Parsipur (Author), Kamran Talattof (Translator, Introduction), Jocelyn Sharlet (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Using the techniques of both the fabulist and the polemicist, Paripur (Prison Memoirs) continues her protest against traditional Persian gender relations in this charming yet powerful novella. Imprisoned once for her dissident views, Paripur, a native of Iran, offers her five characters the opportunity to escape the relationships and mores that constrain them. All of the characters are led to the same metaphorical magic garden, a transcendent, timeless place where they are free to decide their fates. In most instances, this amounts to a rejection of men and marriage. Like Ovid's Daphne, Mahdokht transforms herself into a tree in order to prevent the shameful loss of her virginity. Munis, a 38-year-old virgin, is attacked and killed by her brother for refusing to obey him. She rises from the dead a psychic, heads for the garden and is raped along the way. Farrokhlaqa, a wealthy matron, accidentally kills her oppressive husband of 32 years. She then buys the magical garden where the women congregate. Only Zarrinkolah, the prostitute, discovers wedded bliss when she marries the "good gardener." The voices of the five separate narrators--delicately connected by plot and circumstance--give us variations on the theme of the mistreatment of women in contemporary Iran.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Parsipur here synthesizes the voices of five women in contemporary Iran. Women without men?a prostitute, two unmarried women, a housewife, and a teacher?they all face serious oppression largely because of gender discrimination, cultural traditions, and notions of virginity and women's sexuality. They also seek and find freedom and some solace in the same garden. This garden, located in Karaj, near Tehran, becomes their utopia; the teacher Mahdokht becomes so distraught that she decides to plant herself like a tree in the garden and thus escape reality. Not Parsipur's first work of fiction on women in Iranian society, this novel often reads like a fairy tale, but it launches a strong statement about gender relations in Parsipur's home country. Parsipur currently lives in the United States. Recommended for fiction collections.?Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Libs., Eugene
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 131 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press; 1st edition (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815605528
• ISBN-13: 978-0815605522
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,793,005 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A little gem!!!, May 8, 2001

By	mishalew (Arizona) - See all my reviews

Though I stumbled upon the novel by accident, I must admit this book was well worth finding. The stories were simply written but were almost deceivingly fully loaded-- full of conflicting values, political ideology and agendas, and societal turmoil. The compilation of separate women's lives, so different from one another, but joined together by a common thread, hearkens back to a similar style of tale-telling found in many other cultures, such as Amy Tan's novel 'The Joy Luck Club' and the popular film 'How to Make an American Quilt'. Rather than choosing to write a politicized essay or thesis which reaches only a certain segment of the educated and politically literate population, Parsipur chooses to write fiction, laced with raw truths and posessing a clear agenda.

Such tales are typical of the kind that are passed down from generation to generation in order to educate the young about their society's morals or possible pitfalls that may entrap those who stray from the accepted norm. This is not dissimilar from urban legends that adults in American society pass amongst themselves or the fairy tales laced with truths that young children are told before bedtime.

Sometimes the most volitile information is passed down and understood by the most simple or innocuous means, and I think that is a conscious choice that Parsipur has made with this book. She chooses to uncover the double standard that both male and female society is guilty of upholding, the notion of virginity (and the understanding of what it is and what it means), and socially-sanctioned ideas of morality, mortality, violence, and inter-gender relationships through stories that allow the reader to look at how different women deal with the society that they live in.

Because Parsipur does not clearly lay out a list of evils that Iranian society proportedly commits, nor does she specifically glorify other elements of her society, her writing raises many more questions for the reader to ponder. By making the problems personal for each woman, some of the issues that a reader would initally consider black and white suddenly turn grey, which in turn, leads to a greater depth of meaning in her work.

In sum, I was very impressed by the book's simplicity, and appreciative for the brief glimpse through the window to Iranian society that it offered.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, January 28, 1999

By A Customer

Women without Men is another entry in the growing category of Iranian cultural exports to the U.S., and one of the best. Like the Cannes-winning film The White Balloon, Women without Men presents a much different view of Iranian life than readers might expect based on reports from the evening news--a nuanced, subtle, self-reflexive society much concerned with the role of art in both everyday life and in the turbulent cultural politics of the nation. The story of a group of diverse Iranian women who forge a brief-lived utopian society, Women without Men also addresses, in startling, beautiful prose, the lives of women in any modern society. The fact that these stories can be transposed to, and understood by, Americans, is one of the pleasant surprises of the book; this isn't just a novel for scholars, but for anyone looking for a story that's both entertaining and profound. And, the translators, one Iranian and one American, have done a fabulous job in rendering the Persian into lucid English. I give this book five stars because, even though it's a small book, as one of the very few first rate translations of contemporary Iranian literature, it should be at the top of the reading list for anyone interested in international writing.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars delightful read, June 7, 2000

By A Customer

I am an avid reader of literature of the Middle East and I found Dr. Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet's translation of Parsipur's Women Without Men to be a delightful read. I have suggested it to all my friends in Princeton and beyond. It is one of those books that reads quickly, but stays on the mind a long time. Parsipur touches upon issues that are of interest to men and women, 'Easterners' and 'Westerners' alike.