Hello Gentle Reader,
In todays continued relentless news cycle, it is difficult to avoid any mention, comment, analysis or any lengthy commentary on Iran. Specifically, within the context of the aggression between the United States of America and Israel, with the continued on and off again ceasefire, or any negotiations to open the Strait of Hormuz, which is impacting the worlds economy and inflationary measures. To hear the news, however, the Iranian writer and iconoclast Shahrnush Parsipur has died at the age of 80, was a change of pace, of what can only be sumarised as the endless reportage of a series of Neanderthalic nations, engaged in a ritual of state of chest pounding to prove themselves the bigger man. Its not only juvenile, its downright pathetic. Shahrnush Parsipur’s death marks the end of a writer who has persistently and continually pushed against the political limitations of Iran, having been imprisoned four times throughout her life, both in the current theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran of today, but also of the previous Shah regime. Parsipur’s “Prison Memoir,” is set to make its debut in English in full in 2027. Despite having lived in exile in the United States since the early 90’s, Shahrnush Parsipur has not been readily available in English. The monumental novel “Women Without Men,” first published in 1989 (and subsequently banned), was finally translated and published in 2026 and was later longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. The novel traces the intersecting lives and destinies of five women during the coup d'état in 1953, who come to live in a garden on the outskirts of Tehran. The novel traces the defining feminist themes which were the hallmark and defining legacy of Shahrnush Parsipur. The novels discussion and discourse on female sexuality caused a scandal in the socially conservative and theocratically tightly controlled Islamic society, which once again saw the author imprisoned. While the novel was also deeply critical of the prevailing misogynistic and socially engineered principles to subjugate, demean, oppress and control women. Over the past few years, the world has seen Iranian women surge as political agents and revolutionary forces in Iran and the Arabic/Islamic world, pushing back against their limited social agency and prospects in addition to religious dress codes thrusted and enforced on them by doctrine or law. The death of Mahsa Amini was considered by many to be a catalyst in a wave of social outrage and change that would sweep through Iran. The late, Shahrnush Parsipur held this belief as well, believing that substantial revolutionary change and a call to political freedom for all, would not come from men, but from the women. While the current hostilities have all but thwarted these burning needs for change, they are hopefully not extinguished, and will reignite, whereby the Iranian people can manifest their own destiny, away from the clerics and the geopolitical machinations of a impetuous and imperialist United States of America.
Rest in Peace, Shahrnush Parsipur
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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