In writing Women Without Men (Zanan bedun-e Mardan), Shahrnush Parsipur gave her female characters a freedom that cost her her own. Set against the CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran, the novella follows five women — a sex worker, a schoolteacher, a menopausal housewife, and two unmarried women — all seeking escape from the religious diktats governing their lives. In the book, virginity is divorced from honour, and shame is cast aside to create identity.
The vision was radical for its time. Published in 1989, the book appeared just as Iran was consolidating itself as an Islamic Republic. As the state moved to institutionalise hijab and Sharia-based law, Parsipur’s fantastical tale was seen as an act of insurrection. She was jailed and the book was banned.
Yet, the novella has outlasted its censors. Circulating underground for decades, it went on to become one of the most discussed works of modern Persian literature, even fuelling the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi)’ movement that shook Iran in 2022. This defining book, newly translated by Faridoun Farrokh and published by Penguin International Writers, appears on the 2026 longlist of the International Booker Prize — 37 years after its publication.
A march in Berlin, 2023, to commemorate the first death anniversary of Iranian student Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly tortured by Iran’s morality police.
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On a video call from her home in California, 80-year-old Parsipur leans closer to the screen when I mention the nomination. “It hasn’t won yet,” she says in broken English, her eyes lighting up, belying the decades of exile that have led to this moment.
“From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer,” she later writes in Persian over email. “Back then, I did not have a concept of myself as man or woman writing books for men or women. Even today, I don’t necessarily write for women. I write for both men and women.”
“With the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and an on-going war, there will be major changes.”Shahrnush Parsipur emphasises that she is against this war but hopes this time of churn may open a new chapter for Iranian women.
A political act
Parsipur turned to literature seeking answers to questions typical of adolescence. What is right? What is the meaning of life? How should one live? At 28, her definition of right and wrong collided with politics. Working as a producer at National Iranian Radio and Television, she resigned in protest against the execution of two Tehran poets. Consequently, she was put behind bars for almost two months.
“It was the first time I had committed a political act,” says Parsipur. “Human beings are a political species as well as capable of laughter. Like everyone else, I exist in a political society. I have always opposed political hegemony in Iran and in the U.S. as well, but in America, I am comfortable with its democratic ambience.”
Shahrnush Parsipur’s ‘Women Without Men’ has been translated from the Persian original by Faridoun Farrokh.
After her release, Parsipur moved to Paris where she studied Chinese, Indian and Iranian mythology. Her fascination with myth and symbolism later shaped Women Without Men, which she initially wanted to write as 12 short stories of women from the 12 signs of astrology.
At 34, Parsipur returned to Iran to witness the Iranian Revolution. But the upheaval that followed proved even more dangerous for dissident writers. She was arrested again because political documents were reportedly found in the possession of her brother and mother. She spent nearly five years in prison without formal charges.
As she witnessed thousands of executions around her, Parsipur’s longing for freedom seeped into Women Without Men.
“Magic realism gave me the freedom to do everything that I liked. For example, I could let my character become a bird or an animal and even an angel,” she says. And as she wrote, her imagination was seized by the construct of virginity, an idea she had grown up with, internalising patriarchy. “When I was still a child, my grandmother had told me that if a girl lost her virginity, God would never forgive her,” she recalls.
Young girls in their school’s courtyard under a mural of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, 1997.
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In Iranian schools at the time, there was no such thing as sex education. “Throughout my adolescence and early youth, I thought of virginity and considered it as specific to the female body as breasts.”
After much mulling over, Parsipur considered the duality of the construct and felt compelled to dismantle it. “When I realised that virginity is also a state of mind, I wrote the two stories of Faezeh and Munis that end up in Women Without Men,” she says. “At the time, I never thought of the cultural significance of this issue until I was arrested and imprisoned by the Islamic Republic.”
The idea of paradise
Eventually, Women Without Men gained stronger resonance as it came to be translated into several languages. “Following the so-called Islamic Revolution of the mid-70s, there was a massive migration of mostly upper- and middle-class Iranians, who comprised most of the civic population. Many significant works of Iranian literature, including Women without Men, found their way into the culture of these and surrounding minority communities in European and American population centres,” says academic Faridoun Farrokh, translator of Women without Men.
Parsipur believes that the novella’s brevity has helped it travel across cultures while the women’s movement in Iran has continued to intensify. In 2022, the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini due to alleged police brutality rekindled the debate on state control over women’s bodies.
“As a child, I slept in one of these gardens. The experience proved unforgettable and became the inspiration for the creation of this story.”In a land shaped by arid landscapes, gardens represent a rare oasis of beauty and abundance, says Parsipur.
Says Farrokh, “The significant role played by such luminaries as Parsipur cannot be underrated. Parsipur’s literary genius, and her penetrating insight into the intricacies of the man-woman relationship and its social background provides a roadmap. I haven’t been in Iran, but certainly the recent uprising of women there can be partially attributed to the writings of Parsipur and women of her ilk.”
In the years since the 2022 custodial death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Tehran, a growing number of women have stopped adhering to hijab regulations in protest.
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Parsipur is cautious commenting on the current political state of Iran, though she agrees the role of women writers has expanded manifold. “The false notion about Iranian women is that they have no liberties at all. Of course, at this time they have been severely curtailed. But, intellectually, Iranian women have many liberties. That is why there are so many female writers in Iran. They have discovered writing as the most effective way of attracting attention to their ideals.”
In that act of imagination, Parsipur’s garden of Karadj in the novella also carries echoes of a paradise or a new dawn where women will suffer no shame or tether their sense of worth to men. As fiction often stems from memory, so did the mythical place.
“We could hope women will wear mini jupes, remove their headscarves or engage in more dating and drinking. If the Islamic Republic collapses, there will be further freedom for women. Many paths may open to them, even in politics.”Shahrnush Parsipur
“The idea of paradise entered world literature through Iran,” she explains. In a land shaped by arid landscapes, gardens represent a rare oasis of beauty and abundance. “As a child, I slept in one of these gardens. The experience proved unforgettable and became the inspiration for the creation of this story.”
Years later, that mythical garden has become a symbol of hope and resilience. “With the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and an on-going war there will be major changes,” she says, emphasising that she is completely against this war. Yet she hopes this time of churn may open a new chapter for Iranian women.
“We could hope women will wear mini jupes, remove their headscarves or engage in more dating and drinking. If the Islamic Republic collapses, there will be further freedom for women. Many paths may open to them, even in politics.”
(Shahrnush Parsipur’s quotes have been translated here from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh.)
The writer is a freelance journalist with bylines in leading international and Indian publications.
