Touba and the Meaning of Night

Parsipur is an internationally recognized dissident voice well known in the PEN and other Freedom to write groups. Her work has been championed by such figures as Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, and Amy Tan. She has been arrested and imprisoned by both the Shah’s secret police and by the authorities of the Islamic Republic: the first part of TOUBA was actually written during the author’s 4 year incarceration shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979; Parsipur is now in exile in the U.S. Its literary innovation, use of magic realism, and epic scope does for Iranian and modern Islamic literature what Allende and Garcia did for Latin American literature. Parsipur’s frank portrait of women’s sexuality unprecedented in Iran. TOUBA has been translated into German, Italian, and Swedish. This is the first English language edition of what is considered her greatest work.