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Women Writing Novels Emerge as Stars in Iran
By NAZILA FATHI

New York Times

Over the past decade, Iran's best-selling fiction lists have become dominated by women, an unprecedented development abetted by recent upheavals in Iranian society.

The number of women who have published novels has reached 370, said Hassan Mirabedini, a scholar of Iranian literature, whose findings recently appeared in the magazine Zanan (Women). That is 13 times as many as a decade ago, the research showed, and is about equal to the number for men today.

But the women's books are outselling the men's by far, thanks to simple - some critics say simplistic - language and compellingly personal narratives, often delving into once-taboo subjects like romance and sex. While the average Iranian novel is issued in print runs of 5,000 copies, some women's books have enjoyed printings exceeding 100,000.

"Women writers have not only become the avant-garde of Persian literature, but have also changed society's view of them as writers," Majid Eslami, a critic and editor of the literary and art magazine Haft (Seven), said in an interview.

"There was a time when women writers were constantly at odds with society, but now being a woman novelist is valued," he said. "They have become stars for their readers."

Though the election last week of the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as president has raised fears of new social and cultural curbs in the Islamic Republic, some voiced doubts that such a campaign could succeed. "It is difficult to predict anything," Mr. Mirabedini said in an interview. But he added: "It is hard to undermine literary work in a short period of time. It is rooted in deep cultural layers in society."

Besides, Iranian women have become adept at maneuvering around the forbidden zones drawn by government and society.

These novelists, like Iranian women in general, have always led more restricted lives than their male counterparts. Traditionally, it was not considered appropriate for women to express their feelings and desires in writing.

From the 1930's into the 60's, there were only about a dozen women writing novels, and many used pseudonyms. The energy of literate women then was more focused on establishing basic rights, like suffrage.

By the 1970's, an increasing number of women were earning university degrees and enjoying the financial independence that came from working outside the home. The oil boom further raised incomes and encouraged travel abroad, allowing Iranian women to compare their lives with those of women in other countries.

The 1979 Islamic revolution, however, was a turning point for Iranian women across the spectrum. Better educated and Westernized women were marginalized by the new Islamic government and forced out of public sector jobs. Many turned to self-employment, often as private tutors, translators or writers.

More traditional women, on the other hand, who had been restricted by male relatives from working outside the home, were encouraged to assume public responsibilities in the new theocratic environment.

The 1980-88 war with Iraq accelerated the trend of women taking more control over their own lives, as hundreds of thousands of men left their families to fight at the front.

"With the revolution and the hardships that followed," Goli Emami, a publisher here, said, Iranian women "were compelled to put aside their passive attitude toward life and go out and earn a living. Eventually, after the war, they found the courage to write about their experiences."

The first top-selling novel by a woman was "Drunkard Morning," by Fataneh Haj Seyed Javadi, published in 1998. The novel, set in the 1940's, tells the story of a woman who defies her aristocratic family to marry a carpenter. But he turns out to be abusive; she leaves him, a radical act at the time, and marries someone else.

"Drunkard Morning" was followed by a wave of novels by other women, generating much public discussion about what the plots and characters revealed about the situation of women in Iran.

Though the pioneers of women's fiction in the early 20th century tended to be well educated and from elite families, many of today's successful novelists had a fairly traditional upbringing. They are primarily homemakers who write between their daily chores and draw heavily on their experiences.

For instance, Fariba Vafi, 43, whose novel "My Bird" won three major Iranian awards in 2002, never attended college. As a young girl, however, she traveled to Tehran from her hometown of Tabriz, 335 miles away, every two months to buy books and show her writings to a literature teacher.

Marriage and children delayed her plan to become a novelist. "I also had constant fights with my husband, who did not consider writing novels a profession," she said in her tiny apartment, where she writes when her children are at school.

Her inspirations include the year she spent in a police training course after the 1979 revolution. In "Tarlan," named for the main character, she describes women from poor families who enter the harsh environment of the police school. The book arouses readers' sympathy for policewomen who must enforce the strict social code of Islam and who are widely resented in Iran for harassing women who deviate from Muslim dress rules.

In another recent best seller, "We Get Used to It" by Zoya Pirzad, Arezou, a 41-year-old divorcée, begins running the real estate agency that once belonged to her father. In Iran, such work is dominated by men. Outside the office, Arezou struggles to satisfy her mother and daughter, shallow characters preoccupied with shopping and entertainment. Her one comfort is Shirin, a friend and colleague at the agency.

Both women are independent and wary of men. But then Arezou falls in love with a client, over the objections of her mother, daughter and even Shirin. Arezou is emblematic of middle-aged women in Iran, caught between tradition and modernity. She has rejected prejudices against a woman working in what is seen as a man's job, and left her husband. But her weaknesses become apparent when she yields to society's bias against a middle-aged woman's remarriage; she believes she has no choice but to continue caring for her daughter.

The women writing these novels must cope with two kinds of censors: the government and their families.

Censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which must approve every book before it can be published, ban any explicit mention of sex. They ask for the removal of words like "nudity" and "bosom," even if these appear in metaphors and do not refer to the human body.

"Two figures were moving under the sheet," is how Ms. Haj Seyed Javadi informs readers that two characters in "Drunkard Morning" have a sexual relationship. The readers of Ms. Pirzad's "We Get Used to It" learns that Arezou and Sohrab have kissed when Arezou asks Sohrab if he prefers the taste of the toothpaste to lipstick. "All three," he says, meaning both and her lips, which are never directly mentioned.

Another constraint for writers is the potential reaction of relatives. Until recently, it was unusual for women to write about themselves, their experiences or their feelings. Now they often pattern their characters on people around them.

"In the beginning I was concerned what my sister-in-law thought about what I wrote," said Ms. Vafi, author of "My Bird." "My relatives kept calling me from Tabriz and said they knew what or who I was writing about. Gradually, I have become stronger.

"But my husband complains that I've left no untold secrets in our lives."