"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.
The Iranian best-selling author of eleven books, including Women Without Men, Shahrnush Parsipur now lives in exile in the United States.
This is a monumental book, maybe a masterpiece of Iranian fiction, but certainly a family saga of considerable dimensions that follows the lifetime of one woman, Touba, from girlhood to old age. During a period of time that reaches across most of a century, she represents the traditional, sequestered world to which Iranian women have been assigned for generations. With one significant difference: she enters that world with the blessings of a father who believes that women are the equals to men and are free to think for themselves and shape their own destiny.
The irony of her situation is that while she makes every attempt to exercise that independence, she is restricted to a domestic life, running a household and raising children, while married to a member of the Royal family and a faithless husband. While self-reliant of necessity, especially as her husband's political fortunes force him to leave the country for a while and his wealth evaporates, Touba fails to escape the most crippling demands that her culture places upon women. She is not only party to the honor killing of a young girl but must hide the girl's body in her very own garden.
It's a compelling story, and this is only the beginning. But a caveat or two for interested readers: 1) At 300+ pages, it is a densely worded novel that reads more like a synopsis of a much longer book. 2) The style is very much in the manner of tell-don't-show. Instead of setting a scene in which characters speak and interact, the narration goes on for paragraph after paragraph, telling instead of showing: "She did this and then she did that, then she thought this, and she said that, etc." If you enjoy a long, complex, multi-character story, it will hold your interest, but not in the way you may be used to. This is no page-turner.
Meanwhile, Western readers will have an opportunity to see something of the traditional domestic lives of many women in Iran, where for much of the 20th century they were expected to remain unschooled, given in marriage at an early age to men who were permitted to have several wives, and segregated from the outside world, jealously dominated by males, and forced to be the keepers of their families' honor. Not surprisingly, the book has been banned by the authorities in Iran since its publication in 1987, and its author has spent time in prison there. All in all, a major work that is well worth the time and patience to read and absorb.
As the events this past month unfolded, our aggregated American heads swiveled towards Iran, looking at it with greater interest than since the 1980s. Who is this Iran, center of the Axis of evil, run by a midget Holocaust denier, and populated with beautiful and politically engaged students? Iran鈥檚 history seems like it has been a long tug between its rich, cultural Persian history and religious fundamentalism (with some US puppet governments thrown in for good measure.)
I鈥檓 not sure why, but I鈥檝e always been an Iranophile. I have been deeply impressed by all Persians I鈥檝e met and find the mystical and artistic traditions lovely. This even allowed me to benignly ignore the completely ridiculous assertions of Ahmadinejad, and even more so enjoy the SNL musical spoof of him. And so for a long time, I鈥檇 been looking to read an Iranian-woman author. So when I saw Touba and the Meaning of Night on a pile at a friend鈥檚 house, I picked it up and started reading. Great political changes happen during the long life of the title character, Touba. Her life extends from the turn of the last century till probably the 1960s; and throughout the novel she is vaguely aware of political change but never of it. The almost total separation of the woman鈥檚 realm from the men鈥檚 is extremely hard, especially as a 21st century western woman reader, to fathom, and yet I assume that Touba is a novelistic rendering of a pretty accurate and commonplace experience. And as she grows older, and Iran undergoes total political and social (change), all of which tug on Touba鈥檚 life in mostly upsetting ways, she only is able to perceive the world as a vaguely upsetting shadow; as if the character from Plato鈥檚 cave was a veiled woman. Unlike Magical Realism, the fantastical or escapist aspects of the novel are not a way for the writer to create a slanted critique of their countries corrupt politics (the back of the novel unhelpfully compares it to works by Marquez and Allende.). In Touba, her escape into mystical experiences is just an aspect of this character鈥檚 psychological profile, and for whom, as the reader may experience, are a salve for her relentlessly pessimistic life and attitude. She is a woman locked out of (or into, depending how you look at it) her expected social roles. Even in the restricted society of her time, the expectations of women鈥檚 roles oscillate. One regime outlaws the Burqa, the next reinstates it. And being poorly informed, and uneducated, everything just seems like an arbitrary and frustrating attack on her personal realm. Though, Touba, unlike other women of her generation, was taught to read and this makes her exceptional. It also allows her just enough of a glimpse into the forbidden realm of politics to make her confused. For example, when her husband explains the Bolsheviks by saying they want to divide everything, even women; Touba misunderstands and thinks the Bolsheviks want to literary break women in half. The novel also dips in and out, in an almost Austenian manner, of the lives and minds of other characters in her sphere, from the uncle who tears the fetus out of his raped teenage daughter鈥檚 womb, to the viciously angry young reactionary who threatens to burn Touba鈥檚 home. It鈥檚 all very depressing. This is not the novel to read if one is looking for happy endings (or happy beginnings or in-betweens, even). The characters are not just trapped by their natures (as should be any worthy literary characters), but by an ossification of the roles society demands of them. All the misery seems so worthless. Touba never suffers from poverty, violence, abandonment, on any great scale, and yet the subtleties of her suffering and her escape into religious observance are almost caustic. But it is in direct proportion to how uncomfortable this novel made me that I strongly recommend it.
A wonderful book. I really enjoyed reading it. Some parts are a little harder to get through, but others are suspenseful, fascinating, and gripping. I especially liked learning about Iranian culture and history, both of which I really knew nothing about before reading this book. I feel like I've broadened my horizons a little bit by understanding more about what happened in Iran between the end of the 19th century and the Islamic Revolution. My favorite parts of the story itself were the love story between Ismael and Moones and the magical realism that Parsipur employs, a genre/style of literature that I find especially fascinating. Some of the other reviews on 欧宝娱乐 mentioned the amount of characters and the complexity of the plot. I found myself looking at the character list a few times but only for minor characters. If you're invested in the book and really enjoy it, there won't be a problem keeping up. The complexity adds depth to the story and its themes. For instance, Ismael is an orphan, the "other child," unwanted and neglected, just like Ishmael, Abraham's "other son" who was forced into the desert by his stepmother. But he also represents pain and suffering due to the sharp class distinctions in Iran during the first part of the 20th century. He is also a man in love, an intellectual, and a political figure. This adds several layers of meaning to this one character alone. My real complaint is this edition of the novel, which is poorly edited. Honestly, it does a disservice to Ms. Parsipur's work, which is elegant and skillful and enchanting. The poor proofreading makes it seem as if the publisher rushed along the printing with a disregard for the quality of the typed words to match the quality of the language itself. I recommend this book to anybody interested in Iran, to fans of Parsipur's work, and to people who enjoy a good story, good writing, and some mystical magical-realism!
This is a very serious Iranian novel. Epic. One of the few novels that I've read and wondered if I couldn't fully appreciate it because I'm so unfamiliar with the cultural outlook? I thought it was odd that, maybe because it was written by a woman, it seems to be regarded as a feminist work. The female protagonist is sometimes strong... but sometimes isn't. And I do feel like the work perpetuates a large number of mysogenist practices (or is it just reflecting a reality?).
Ismael grew curious about the source of this desire that women seemed to have to predict the future. Thus they were weak, and needed to be surrounded by other weak people. That is why they wanted an enclosed space with their provisions safe inside it, where there was no one and no war could penetrate. Ismael had no doubt that it was a woman who invented the concepts of storing food, weaving carpets and knitting clothes.
Well, I guess, you be the judge. I will tell you this book took me forever and a day to read.
I love when I read a book and leaves me wandering in its world for hours, days, weeks afterwards. This book accomplished that and so much more for me, intellectually and emotionally. If you have any interest in Iran, mysticism, gender, or Islam, I highly recommend this book.
What intrigued me most in this novel is its relationship to magic realism. In Touba and the meaning of Night what we call magic is deeply rooted in religion although disregarding the magical twists that were borrowed from pre-Islamic philosophy and skillfully woven into the narrative will be unfair to the novel in its totality. Throughout the novel, I could not help but compare it with One Hundred Years of Solitude and kept thinking how magic is culturally and religiously coded. One of the questions that I am left with at the end of the novel is how much of this book is magical for Iranian readers or for those who are familiar with Islamic philosophy? The reason why I asked this question is in the novel Touba, more often than not, could justify her seemingly unreasonable actions with Islamic precepts. Maybe I am asking the wrong questions and should start with the religion itself and ask how much of a religion is magic. I don't know where to go from here but I'm glad that this novel made me dust off a basic question concerning magic that I had stopping contemplating on.
Another point that drew my attention is novel's intertextuality. At some point we read an explicit reference to Sadiq Hedayet's Blind Owl. As far as I remember, this part included the characters Prince Gil and Layla. Following this allusion to Blind Owl, I read (or forced myself to read) the story of Prince Gil and Layla with Blind Owl in my mind.
One last point that I want to touch upon is Parsipur's presentation of the decay of traditional lifestyles in tandem with the rise of science and technology which takes the upper hand in every aspect of daily life. I believe this type of a juxtaposition also shapes the reading experience. For example, at the end of the novel, Touba sees the pomegranate tree laden with crimson pomegranates. She is fascinated to see them to the point that she cannot take her eyes away from them. For her, Truth that she was behind of for all her life gives itself away. For Touba, Truth lies in pomegranates. Does it? At that point, I caught myself thinking that this pomegranate tree harbours two dead bodies buried under it. Two dead bodies as perfect fertilizer for the tree and the result is huge, "bloody", shinny pomegranates. But what made me think that way? I realized that I stopped following Touba's trajectory of thinking blindly and come up with scientific (commonsensical?) explanations for the events. Or maybe I missed the whole point, i.e. the truth, that lies in pomegranates fed on two dead bodies: nothing dies but evolves. If I read the truth that way, I will not stop there and allude to Deleuze and his idea of "becoming" which has so much in common with the philosophy of Mulla Sadra (Iranian Shia Islamic philosopher) whose name is also uttered at some point in the novel. I believe this type of a reading also sheds light on the closure of the novel.
I read Touba after reading Parsipur鈥檚 wonderful novella Women Without Men. The novella wove the disturbing stories of five women together with the strength of a parable, and I was hoping that Touba would also be in this vein. The novel is steeped in Persian legend and lore, but the symbolism lost its force for me in the long novel format. The bold little allegories that I enjoyed in Women Without Men were sort of muddied down in service of the larger plot about a matriarch whose life story mirrors Iran鈥檚 sociopolitical turmoil. Perhaps my distaste for generational tales about the changing times of whatever country the story happens to be set in, especially those with fantastic elements, makes me judge this novel too harshly. In Touba鈥檚 defense (cause it needs to be defended by me), I think it鈥檚 a stronger novel than The House of the Spirits, which is the most obvious point of comparison in terms of style and plot. Unlike The House of the Spirits, though, whose fantastic elements merely seem to be a style choice, the magical realism in Touba is closely tied to the religious lives of the characters, which I thought justified and strengthened the magical thread. Even though neither novel is really my thing, I鈥檓 glad Touba has been translated into English because it serves as a rare glimpse into the very fascinating lives of Iranian women.