Touba and the Meaning of Night
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- USD 2.99
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- USD 2.99
Descripción editorial
An Iranian woman forges her own path through life in this "stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature" (Publishers Weekly).
After her father's death, fourteen-year-old Touba takes her family's financial security into her own hands by proposing to a fifty-two-year-old relative. But, intimidated by her outspoken nature, Touba's husband soon divorces her. When she marries again, it is to a prince with whom she experiences tenderness and physical passion and bears four children—but their relationship sours when he proves unfaithful. Touba is granted a divorce, and as her unconventional life continues, she becomes the matriarch of an ever-changing household of family members and refugees . . .
Hailed as "one of the unsurpassed masterpieces of modern Persian literature" (Iranian.com), Touba and the Meaning of Night explores the ongoing tensions between rationalism and mysticism, tradition and modernity, male dominance and female will—all from a distinctly Iranian viewpoint. Defying both Western stereotypes of Iranian women and expectations of literary form, this beautiful novel reflects the unique voice of its author as well as an important tradition in Persian women's writing.
"Parsipur's novel carries the reader on a mystical and emotional odyssey spanning eight decades of Iranian cultural, political, and religious history . . . rewarding and enlightening." —Booklist
"A sweeping chronicle of modern Iranian history and a study of the plight of twentieth-century Iranian women . . . [displaying] deft utilization of magic realism and Persian myths . . . rich and well-crafted." —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
