Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

Women Without Men follows five women—a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a prostitute, and a schoolteacher among them—whose different paths lead them to live together in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. Drawing on Islamic mysticism and recent Iranian history, the novel depicts these women escaping the constraints of family and society, imagining a future without men. The work functions as an allegory of contemporary Iran, employing fable-like and polemical techniques to address traditional Persian gender relations and women's sexuality. Shortly after its 1989 publication, author Shahrnush Parsipur was arrested and jailed for the novel's frank portrayal. Banned in Iran, it became a national bestseller and was translated into several languages, introducing readers to Parsipur's witty and subversive writing.