Timeline Shahrnush Parsipur

Iranian novelist, short-story writer and translator whose magical realist fiction about women's lives under patriarchal oppression made her one of the most important and persecuted writers in modern Persian literature. Imprisoned four times under both the Shah and the Islamic Republic for her writing and political dissent, she lived the last 32 years of her life in exile in California. Her most celebrated work, Women Without Men (1990), was banned in Iran, adapted into a Venice Film Festival award-winning film, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize in the year of her death.

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Shahrnush Parsipur 11

1946 Shahrnush Parsipur born in Tehran Born Shahrnush Parsipur in Tehran, Iran, the daughter of Ali Parsipur, a judge and lawyer, and Fakhr al-Moluk Vala, an educated homemaker. She began writing at the age of thirteen.
1965 – 1969 University of Tehran Studied sociology at the University of Tehran. Made her literary debut in 1969 with the children's book The Little Red Ball.
1974 First Arrest Arrested after resigning from her position as a producer at National Iranian Radio and Television in protest against the execution of two political dissidents. This was the first of four imprisonments.
1974 The Dog and the Long Winter Published her first adult novel, The Dog and the Long Winter, becoming only the second woman in Iranian literary history to publish a novel, after Simin Daneshvar.
1979 – 1984 Imprisoned After the Revolution Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, imprisoned for four and a half years without ever being formally charged with a crime.
1989 Touba and the Meaning of Night Published Touba and the Meaning of Night, a sweeping novel written after her years in prison that explored a century of Iranian history through a woman's life. The book established her as a major voice in Persian literature.
1990 Women Without Men Published Women Without Men, a short novel in the form of connected stories about five women seeking freedom from male domination. Its frank portrayal of female sexuality led to her arrest and imprisonment. The book was banned in Iran and became an underground classic.
1994 Exile to California Left Iran for the United States, settling in California as a political refugee. She would never return to her homeland. Received the Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett Award for writers persecuted for their work.
2009 Women Without Men Film Visual artist Shirin Neshat adapted Women Without Men into a feature film that won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival.
2013 Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir Published Kissing the Sword, a memoir of her experiences in Iranian prisons, translated into English by Sara Khalili for the Feminist Press.
2026 International Booker Longlisting and Death Women Without Men was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2026, bringing her work to a new generation of English-language readers. She died of a heart attack in a hospital near San Francisco on July 3 at the age of 80, having lived in exile for 32 years.