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

Exiled Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur’s banned novella explores women’s freedom amid political repression and cultural patriarchy.

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 lives. In the book, virginity is divorced from honour, and shame is cast aside to create identity.

The vision was radical for its time. Published in 1989, the book appeared just as Iran was consolidating itself as an Islamic Republic. As the state moved to institutionalise hijab and Sharia-based law, Parsipur’s fantastical tale was seen as an act of insurrection. She was jailed and the book was banned.

Yet, the novella has outlasted its censors. Circulating underground for decades, it went on to become one of the most discussed works of modern Persian literature, even fuelling the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi)’ movement that shook Iran in 2022. This defining book, newly translated by Faridoun Farrokh and published by Penguin International Writers, appears on the 2026 longlist of the International Booker Prize — 37 years after its publication.

A march in Berlin, 2023, to commemorate the first death anniversary of Iranian student Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly tortured by Iran’s morality police. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

On a video call from her home in California, 80-year-old Parsipur leans closer to the screen when I mention the nomination. “It hasn’t won yet,” she says in broken English, her eyes lighting up, belying the decades of exile that have led to this moment.

“From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer,” she later writes in Persian over email. “Back then, I did not have a concept of myself as man or woman writing books for men or women. Even today, I don’t necessarily write for women. I write for both men and women.”