Touba and the Meaning of Night

"[With this] bold, insightful novel . . . Parsipur makes a stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Parsipur should be admired both as a courageous woman who endured jail and torture . . . and as a writer and innovator."-Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

Now available in paperback, this complex epic captures the changing fortunes of Iranian women in the twentieth century from the era of colonialism to the rule of two shahs to the 1980 Islamic Revolution.

The Iranian best-selling author of eleven books, including Women Without Men, Shahrnush Parsipur now lives in exile in the United States.

|||This book is sold in the US by Sony Electronics Inc. |||This book is sold in Canada by Sony Electronics Inc.

Starred Review. Eighty dramatic years in Iran--from the turn of the 20th-century to the 1979 revolution--are witnessed through Touba's chador-covered eyes in this bold, insightful novel, Parsipur's second to be translated into English. After her farther dies when she's 14, Touba--smart and spiritual, but barely educated--proposes, for financial reasons, to a 52-year-old man. Miserably depressed, she divorces him a few years later, and marries a Qajar prince; it is a loving relationship, but when he takes a second wife, she divorces him, too. Alone and impoverished as the prince's dynasty is displaced, she weaves carpets to make money, cares for her children and communes with a dead girl's ghost that haunts her property. As Touba grows older, she seeks truth with a Sufi master, but the demands of her crumbling household intervene. Initially published in Iran in 1989, this ground-breaking novel--which juxtaposes reality and mysticism, becoming especially fantastical toward the book's conclusion--was quickly banned by the Islamic Republic, which had imprisoned Parsipur before and did so again. Her 11 novels remain banned in Iran. Now an exile in San Francisco, Parsipur makes a stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature. (May)
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

• Published by

  The Feminist Press

• Publish Date

  December 31, 2007 

• Print ISBN

  1558615571

• eBook ISBN

  9781558616318

• Imprint

  The Feminist Press

• Filesize

  986.20 KB

• Number of Print Pages*

  368

* Number of eBook pages may differ. Click here for more information.