Exiled Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur on her International Booker Prize-nominated novella
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…