Remembering Shahrnush Parsipur

A perspective on the personal life of a socially conscious literary legend

(2^nd part of two parts)

By Dr. Ali Kiafar*

A great Iranian novelist and literary figure passed away after a prolonged illness at the age of 80 on 3^rd of July 2026. In commemoration of the passing of Ms. Parsipur a review and analysis of her literary work was previously written by this author (IN COMMEMORATION OF SHAHRNUSH PARSIPUR: A Powerful Literary Voice and a Woman of Conscience’ Iran Post – July 7th 2026). Here is a reflection of her non-literary personal life, political and social sensitivities,  and this author’s relationship with Shahrnush Parsipur.

A Glimpse into Shahrnush Parsipur’s Professional Life

Like many socially and politically conscious writers, poets, artists intellectuals of her generation and the historical eras of 1960s and 1970s who were forced out of the professional life either through the government’s crack down on dissidents or on their own consciousness, Shahrnush Parsipur experienced the taste of being imprisoned. She began her professional career at Iran’s National Television in 1967. After an initial clerical position, Parsipur worked as the producer of a program devoted to the lives of rural women. However, just a few years later, in February 1975, she resigned in protest against the government execution of poet and political activist Khosrow Golsorkhi and the arrest of several prominent Iranian writers and intellectuals, including novelists Houshang Golshiri and Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, artist Farideh Lashai, and journalist/ sports writer Parviz Zahedi. Shortly after her resignation, she herself was arrested and spent fifty-four days in prison.

Following her release, she briefly considered leaving Iran but ultimately decided to stay.

In 1981, in the new Islamic rule, she was arrested for a second time. This time she was imprisoned for more than four years. She later chronicled this experience in her memoir Prison Memoirs.

Parsipur, however, was never affiliated with any political organization. Under the Islamic Republic, she was imprisoned solely because she was carrying publications belonging to her brother in her car while she was on her way to visit her imprisoned sister. After her release, she devoted herself primarily to literary translation. She opened a small bookstore on Sana’i Street in Tehran, which she managed several years before eventually emigrating to the United States.

My Acquaintance and friendship with Shahrnush Parsipur

I had the privilege of knowing Shahrnush personally and benefitting from her gifting me the acknowledge about her life, her writing style and philosophy, and her books and other writings through many years.

I met Shahrnush for the first time during a visit I made to Iran in 1992, when I had been invited to participate in an international conference on the methods and ways to design new buildings or strengthen the existing building to withstand earthquakes and prevent grand scale human causalities. Having been introduced to her by a writer friend of mine in the US, before my trip to Iran, I visited Ms. Parsipur at her apartment north of Vanak Square in Tehran. Not having a particular agenda for the meeting I expected to spend only a brief time with her. After our initial introductions though—more an opportunity for her to become acquainted with me than me with her—we began discussing my views on The Dog and the Long Winter, which I had read in the 1970s shortly before leaving Iran for the United States, as well as on Touba and the Meaning of Night, which I had read a couple of years before that trip. Our conversation soon expanded to include her literary thoughts, discussion of her other writings, her literary career, and her writing style. On the other hand, she was very delighted – as she put it herself – to know that I, an architect by training and a city planning academic, had read all of the books written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was very familiar with the magical realism style utilized by Marquez early on and employed by her in the book Women without Men. On the personal level, she talked in length about her years in prison, the experiences she had endured there, and the memoir she later wrote about those years.

What had been intended as a two-hour visit gradually unfolded into a conversation lasting more than five hours. Our very warm dialogue and pleasant meeting ended only because I had another commitment that night that I could not get out of.

Toward the end of our meeting, Shahrnush remarked that our conversation had become so meaningful to her that she wished to give me not only a signed copy of Women Without Men, which had only recently been published, but also a complete photocopy of the manuscript of The Etiquette of Drinking Tea in the Presence of a Wolf, a work that had not yet appeared in print. She asked me to read it after returning to the United States and, if I believed it deserved a wider readership, to help arrange for its publication in the West. She also asked me to assist her in moving to the United States through my connections with universities and literary and cultural organizations.

I started to read Etiquette of Drinking… on the two long flights from Tehran to Los Angles as I could not wait to get to my city of residence and read the book later. But more than the pleasure of being one of the first readers of the Etiquette of Drinking – even before it was published –I was and still am so happy that I was able to fulfill every one of her requests when I returned to the US.

Shortly after returning to Los Angeles—thanks more to the efforts of my wife than my own—we were able to sell for Shahrnush approximately two hundred fifty copies of Women Without Men which Shahrnush mailed to us from Iran in a series of postal shipments over a period of time. We sent her the entire proceeds from the sales, together with an additional financial contribution of our own in U.S. dollars – a considerable sum of money.

Her gratitude was profound.

At the time, her financial circumstances were far from secure, and this assistance meant a great deal to her. On numerous occasions, she expressed her appreciation to friends and acquaintances who came to know her through me, speaking warmly of the support she had received.

After she immigrated to the United States, we remained in close contact for some years. Eventually, however, life gradually carried us in different directions. She settled in Northern California, while my own academic and professional responsibilities in Southern California became increasingly demanding. As Shahrnush had to adjust to her new life in America and both of us were occupied with our respective commitments, our conversations inevitably became less frequent.

The last time we met was at my home during the celebration of the seventy-fifth birthday of my dear friend Majid Roushangar, the editor and publisher of the Persian literary quarterly Barresi-ye Ketab. Shahrnush traveled from Northern California to Southern California to attend the gathering. It was an unforgettable evening, filled with warmth, friendship, and the shared memories of a remarkable generation of Iranian writers and intellectuals. Sadly, it was the last time Shahrnush and I saw one another. And now that she is gone, I am so regretful that the same inattentiveness that I had over the years, losing the chance to spend more time with at least two other great figures in the arts and literature of Iran happened with Shahrnush. The result of not properly thinking that nobody is immortal and if you lose the opportunity of meeting the ones you like or even love again and again and being with them as much as possible when you can, may not happen in the future.

The first of the other two personalities that I am very regretful about not meeting when they were around was the great theater and film actor Ezzatolah Entezami. I met him for the first and unfortunately the last time at the house of my dear friend Rakhshan Bani-Etemad at the party she had thrown for me when I had gone to Iran in another year and for another purpose. She had graciously invited several prominent literary figures, film critics and actors for me to meet. I have memorialized in an article the encounter with Entezami – known as Mr. Cinema amongst many of his admirers – and the lengthy conversation I had with him (actually he talking and me listening) on the long ride from the apartment of Mrs. Bani-Etemad and Mr. Kosari (her husband) in mid-city to Mr. Entezami’s house in Daar-Aabaad in an area on the east side of the north Tehran and his sincere and repeated invitation that two days later I meet him at the Cinema Museum of Iran where his cinematic works were on display to talk further. And foolishly I stuck with my original plan to leave Iran the next day after that night I met Entezami, as if the world would come to stand still if I extended my stay in Tehran by just three days.

The second lost chance occurred with the novelist Houshang Golshiri who I, as a member of an academic group of Iranian university professors and researchers in the United States and Canada, named Center for Iranian Research and Analysis (CIRA) had invited him to participate in CIRA’s annual conference, held in different cities over the years. Before the conference, I had invited Golshiri to come to Los Angeles, after the end of the three-day international conference, to stay with me, meet with Iranian writers in this city and give a lecture at UCLA. This was the same idea that I had planned and executed with other prominent Iranian writers or poets who had been invited by CIRA in different years to participate in its annual conference, figures like Mahmoud Dowlatabad and Manouchehr Atashi who were my personal guests at my house and Ahmad Shamlou staying at another person’s house while in Los Angeles. With the exception of Dowlatabadi, I lost the privilege of staying in touch with them after they left my house and Los Angeles. The losses I have greatly lamented about. And now remembering Shahrnush Parsipur and the lost chances of being with her more is biting into my soul.

Today, we remember Shahrnush Parsipur with deep admiration and gratitude—a writer of extraordinary conscience and moral courage who, despite enduring years of censorship, the prohibition of her books, imprisonment, exile, and the many hardships imposed upon her, created a body of literature that continues to inspire readers and writers around the world. Her voice remains one of the enduring achievements of modern Persian literature, and her legacy will continue to resonate for generations to come.

*Ali A Kiafar, PhD, REFP