Women without Men (‎Syracuse‬: ‎Syracuse university Press‬, ‎1998), Shahrnush ParsipurFive women set out to escape the oppressive restrictions of family and social life in contemporary Iran. A prostitute, a wealthy, middle-aged housewife, two seemingly desperate "old maids, " and a woman whose career ended after her boss asked her out share a common quest for independence that may be fulfilled in a garden villa. Through murder, suicide, even rape, as well as love, contemplation, and spiritual tr...

Oh great, I get to be a book club naysayer for the third time out of three, on the second book in a row that I voted for out of ten total potentials. I'm averaging 2.666 on club-related ratings here, which incidentally makes me happy because 666, but primarily makes me feel like Asshole McChoosy-pants. I hope the candidates I put forward all end up middling-to-sucky, or I'm sure going to look like a real taste snob. I swear I am not blindly obstinate. I double-swear I like books. Much.The truth

I read a review that claimed that this is not a feminist novel. If it were a feminist novel, the characters would not rely on men, they would assert themselves powerfully at all times, and their lives would be better for it.Umm, newsflash. A novel can be feminist without all its characters being feminists, strong women, and perfect all the time. That would be unrealistic and boring. Let's first understand that feminism is realism, i.e. realistic portrayal of women, including women who are not fe...

Becoming a tree in order to avoid life problems is definitely a 2020 mood. Review to come!

Re-read - still a wonderful bookFor the past few years, I have traveled to Washington DC and stayed a few days just to visit the museums. Plus, I live in Philly, so it’s like a two hour train trip. I’ve learned that the smaller Smithsonian tends to have the more interesting exhibits. I discovered a love for Whistler’s etchings at the Freer, and at the Hirshorn, I discovered that I do like some modern art and video installations. It was at the Hirshorn last summer that I heard of this book. Last

Shahrnush Parsipur was - is - persecuted in Iran, where she’s from, for this book (among other things). Partly because she dares talk about, you know, sex, virginity, female sexuality. Topics that are not to be mentioned ever. ‘Women Without Men’ does reference the title of the Hemingway work ‘Men Without Women’. I haven’t read the latter, but in the afterword to this book, it says it’s a book where ultimately a life without women isn't particularly satisfying. The same (but in reverse) is the c...

I can't claim to say I really understood anything in this book. Five women, whose lives intersect, are drawn together and crazy, crazy things happen to them.Mahdokht is dissatisfied with her life and wants to do more with it. Then she catches the maid having sex with the gardener, which disgusts her. And then, she becomes a tree. The tree is fed with breast milk and finally burst into seeds and scatters.Fai'za is slightly more sensible and remains human. But that's about it. She lusts after her

I guess magical realism just isn't for me. Especially when I wasn't expecting it. I read this because I saw it in a list of feminist books written by women around the world, and since I'd never read something in this vein by an Iranian author (especially one who was improsined for writing this very work), I was looking forward to gaining some insight into Iranian culture through her eyes. The expectation for something more realist certainly didn't help, but even after I had readjusted my expecta...

This is a really wild novel, unlike any you'll ever read. Parsipur was banned in her native Iran; last I knew she was living in the States (she's taught at Brown U.). Parsipur deals with the limited choices women have in Iran, the violence they face for being raped, rebellious, for breaking even in small ways with the constrictive norm. The novella cannot of course take these issues head-on and so does so in a wildly imaginative way. Parsipur's women find their own haven--one woman becomes a tre...

This reminded me of Herta Muller's writing - the same sense of the truth being hidden inside layers of allegory - not surprising since they are both writing out of a culture of censorship and oppression. However, I found Parsipur's allegories easier to understand.

In a way, of course, the title is a lie. Women without men is an impossibility as long as women are defined first and foremost by their relationships to men, which obviously is no less true given the setting of the novel, but hardly unique to it either.Women Without Men tell the story of a half-dozen women circling this issue while rarely able to confront it head-on - even if they do, even if they kill or die or return from death with the power to read minds or turn into a tree (yes, it's that k...

Women Without Men appears more like a poem than a novel. It is so infused with symbolism that one must either suspend reality, or imagine what Parsipur was trying to convey about the social and political climate at that point in Iran's history. Thankfully, the afterward that accompanied the edition of the novel that I read was most useful when tackling the latter task.Women Without Men is unlike any other text I have read, and yet it's brevity makes it seem so light and simple, as though the sto...

I must say, I expected a whole different kind of story from the description I read about the book. And a big surprise waited for me: it is so full of magical elements that your head is spinning and you get the message only when you reach the very last pages. I guess all those literature classes from high school, stuffed with allegories, metaphors and symbols, showed their utility now :D (view spoiler)[ A woman who transforms herself into a tree, is being fed with breast milk and explodes into a

I liked this particular brand of magical realism. It doesn't resemble the Southern American style too much, and it's imbued enough with the mythos of both old and new Iran to make it super-interesting. I see that the book is praised as being a feminist manifesto in fiction form, but that many people, who were reading it for this reason, were disappointed after discovering that the feminist message isn't the main message of the book. This didn't bother me. It's not that the story is not feminist

Women Without Men is a short novel made up of stories about five women who come together in a house with a garden in Karaj, outside Tehran. They include a wealthy middle-class wife and a prostitute.Parsipur's stories involve the challenges women face in trying to live without men in Iran, featuring a debate about whether virginity is a curtain or a hole, rape, and the enforcement of notions of honour by women as well as men, as well as more everyday concerns. The stories are about people, not id...

Women Without Men breaks my heart. It was difficult to read at times because of the stark violence and discrimination against women. As a Western woman, I am aware of the privileges I have over other women in the world. This was made very clear to me when I read the stories of these five women. The magical realism in this novel is amazing and works so well with the plot and the characters. I absolutely love the storyline and the way the garden acts as a catalyst for change. The change is really

4.5. Great book about a group of disparate women pushed too far. I loved the elements of magical realism, seeds of which are planted throughout but don’t really blossom until a certain double resurrection. The women coming together in the house/garden was deeply satisfying but all too short-lived. Their individual post-scripts really rushed the ending for me; I wanted more! I can’t wait to see the movie (trailer here: https://youtu.be/rB95i9Ro6-s), and I just found another book by this author tr...

It is very beautiful and poetic. One can also call this piece frank. However I am still struggling to unite the pieces together into a comprehensive story.Also I am not completely sure how to make sense of these stories withing the feminist narrative.

I enjoyed this so much! I wasnt expecting the speculative elements, but it had that balance of realism with a bit of magical elements in it that i love. Real good.

Well, damn. I could not have chosen a finer book to end this terrible year with. Some years ago I watched Women Without Men - the film that was made by Shiran Neshat in 2009. At the time, with little or no context, it seemed like a strange if not grim and fantastical tale filled with incredible characters that I could not envision as part of the Iran I knew, and yet, were all exactly the kind of idiosyncratic curiosities I did associate with Iran. Fast forward to 2019 and I find this book I thin...

I recently saw an exhibit at the Hirshhorn featuring Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat. I was intrigued by the title of a book, this book, that inspired Neshat's film of the same name. Many of the her other pieces dealt with gender segregation in modern Iranian society, the role of women in political movements, and what an individual does when one's choices are limited. So I checked out the book that inspired the film and understood why the two exiled artists were suited for collaboration. H...

Review originally posted at Eve's Alexandria, 2012.--Shahrnush Parsipur's splendidly subversive, funny and bitter little novella, Women Without Men (Zanan bedun mardan, 1989; translated from the Persian in 1998 by Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet) is set in 1953, and tells the intertwined stories of five different Iranian women. Each is introduced in her own little vignette, and then is gradually drawn in towards the rest through both the machinations of the plot and, thematically, through th...

A very quick read, and extremely allegorical...a bit too much for my taste, really, but very powerful because of it. I think part of my appreciation for the book stems from my respect for the author and the opposition (including inprisonment) that she has had to endure. And the imagery is really beautiful -- which is probably why Shirin Neshat decided to make the four short films for Prospect 1 based on this novella...which is what I saw and led me to this book. Of course now I want to read Hemi...

My friend gave this to me; I wouldn't have known about it otherwise. It's muted writing, with a slight magical realism to it. I find myself reflecting on it further now that I've read The Bookseller of Kabul. The grave oppression that is evident in the nonfiction book is softened here, but there's also a peculiar affective flatness to the writing. It's as though the beauty and subversiveness of the ideas, given the cultural context from which the book came, had to be framed in an understated man...

It was okay. There was a good joke in there, but the surrealism just never really worked for me. It was kind of just stated as a fact that had to be accounted for, without really drawing you into anything that felt magical or strange. The transformations and all that didn't really seem to carry much significance either, but that could very well be my lack of understanding. It's basically a story where a vast majority of men is horrible, but when it comes down to it, the women don't really get al...

Strong female characters in a repressive environment. It was an interesting look at the Iranian culture in recent decades. I always find it shocking to see how little value is given to a woman's life in that culture. Though the story dealt with very heavy themes, the interweaving of humor and magic realism left me feeling hopeful for their futures. The ending left me breathless. I may not have loved the entire book, but I LOVED the ending.

Well, it was an interesting book (I don't understand why the author was jailed for it, I don't see anything that could be disruptive in this book). I came with different expectations when I started it...Now I see it more as a metaphor for women's lives in Iran. One of the women turns into a tree, to be free to wander the world, other accidently kills her husband... Either way, they seek a safe heaven, to be free, but ultimately this is not possible.

The translation on this reads really awkward most of the time and makes it harder to wrap your head around what’s going on. There were so many instances in which I tried to think of what the actual phrasing was in Farsi that lead to its translation because it just didn’t flow right sometimes. I think I’m definitely going to try reading this again in Farsi.

This is a delightful, if as time strange little book. It mixes magical realism with gender politics to great effect. The Danish translation feels very true to the original prose and is beautiful. The book is very grounded in 1953's Iran and the magical elements underscore the predicaments of the women rather than detract from them in my opinion.

This short, magical novel reads more like poetry than prose. Parsipur writes about the limited (and often horrifying) choices of women in modern Iran, and although I didn't love each part of this book equally, there are some gorgeous, haunting lines that made it well worth the read.