Here are 100 books that Women Without Men fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
I love “Persepolis” because the author very accurately and with a great amount of humor describes, and through graphics, portrays the very heavy topic of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
She makes it easy for people who weren’t there at the time and are not a part of the culture or history to imagine what happened. I like how she describes family relationships, especially with her parents, in a tribal culture. In a very transparent way, she accurately describes the differences between private family life and the one that is portrayed publicly.
Wise, often funny, sometimes heart-breaking, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, growing up during the Iranian Revolution.
The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran's last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life.
Amidst the tragedy, Marjane's child's eye view adds immediacy and humour, and her story of a childhood at once outrageous and ordinary,…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Ever since I picked up an old copy of Richard Halliburton’s Book of Wonders as a child, I’ve known that exploring other cultures and countries is something I wanted to experience for the rest of my life. From then on, I’ve traveled, taken cross-cultural studies, and managed international teams as a tech marketer–and my passion for new people and places hasn’t ceased. I love reading (and writing) about the liminal spaces in history–the times and places that aren’t easy to define and don’t make it into standard history books. This list reflects my interests, and I hope it broadens the horizons of other readers.
I think the title pulled me toward this book. I knew it was about a carpetmaker in 17th-century Persia, and I guessed that the blood of flowers might refer to the dye used to color the wool for the rugs.
I found this way of describing dye to be extremely evocative. As it turns out, that was only the beginning of my fascination with this beautiful book. Following a young woman in the beautiful city of Isfahan, I had no idea that I would learn so much about the process of making carpets. I even found myself looking up ancient and medieval Persian carpet photos online (they’re amazing!).
The protagonist manages to do some extremely stupid things, and at one point, I found myself yelling at her. But she matures. That character development from an immature and reckless young girl to a strong, self-reliant woman was really lovely to experience.
A sensuous and richly-imagined historical novel that centers on a skilled young carpet weaver, her arranged marriage, and her quest for self-determination in 17th-century Persia.
In 17th-century Iran, a 14-year-old woman believes she will be married within the year. But when her beloved father dies, she and her mother find themselves alone and without a dowry. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to sell the brilliant turquoise rug the young woman has woven to pay for their journey to Isfahan, where they will work as servants for her uncle, a rich rug designer in the court of the…
I’m a pragmatist and a problem-solver. As a student of innovation, I draw inspiration from a risk-taker’s approach to attacking a problem. I’ve changed my life drastically from a farmland kid to a global technology CEO and then author. Along the way, I’ve had opportunities to struggle. I’ve found conventional wisdom seldom fixes the problem, so I’ve refined the ability to look for unique paths. I believe women provide the best examples to learn from because they don’t walk into the room bluffing their way to the solution. They credit the resources they tapped for their solution and bring others along in the journey to raise the education level.
The choices Forugh Farrokhzad made shocked me at times, which made the story even more compelling. This Iranian poet broke my heart with her desperation to live her life true to herself. I’m gutted by the fact that in another country, Forugh wouldn’t have needed to make such drastic choices to be a poet and a woman with dreams and needs.
Listening to the story read by Mozhan Marno, a favorite actress of mine, magnified the intensity of the story. Feminism takes many forms and is highly impacted by our surroundings. This story made me dig deep into how far I’d push my personal boundaries for what I believe in. I will read anything Jasmin Dapzink publishes.
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society’s expectations to find her voice and her destiny
“A complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people, a reminder of the power and purpose of art, and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I was born in New Jersey to an American mother and an Iranian father. I spent the first twenty years of my life living both in Tehran and New York, striving to fit and blend into whatever culture I happened to occupy at a given moment. I whined about this, wishing I was one thing or another. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution erupted and my family was permanently exiled, I learned the true meaning of being careful about what you wish for. To connect with my lost Persian heritage, I began to write about it, and to write about living in the diaspora. It’s how I make sense of the world.
This is a memoir by a 32-year-old Iranian-American journalist who, in 2009, was accused and sentenced to 8 years in Evin Prison for being an American spy. Paraphrasing my review inThe San Francisco Chronicle, Saberi's skillful reconstruction of dialogue leads to a spot-on chronicle of the paranoia and utter buffoonery of the Iranian government and its apparatchiks. I was especially impressed by the way she survives her time in solitary confinement – the resources of her mind that keep her sane. Beyond that, this memoir is a kind of coming-of-age story for those of us in the diaspora who can be a bit naïve about how safe we are as journalists and US citizens in dictatorships. Saberi is freed after 4 months, thanks to international pressures, but she’s haunted by those she met in prison who are left behind.
“Between Two Worlds is an extraordinary story of how an innocent young woman got caught up in the current of political events and met individuals whose stories vividly depict human rights violations in Iran.” — Shirin Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Between Two World is the harrowing chronicle of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi’s imprisonment in Iran—as well as a penetrating look at Iran and its political tensions. Here for the first time is the full story of Saberi’s arrest and imprisonment, which drew international attention as a cause célèbre from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and leaders across the…
I’ve been fascinated with ancient history since childhood, but really fell in love with the Achaemenids in college while taking classes on Greek history and wondering about the other side’s perspective on familiar stories of the Persian Wars. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to study both Greek and Persian history in graduate school at the University of Chicago, a leading center of scholarship on the Achaemenid world since the Persepolis excavations in the 1930s. Since 2006, I’ve taught in the History department at Christopher Newport University, a liberal arts university in Newport News, Virginia. I’m currently working on my next book, a new history of Persia’s Greek campaigns.
The Persian empire’s size and diversity impose special challenges for modern study. The major sources are written in a wide variety of ancient languages, including Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and many texts were initially studied in specialist publications with limited accessibility outside a small circle of scholars. Kuhrt’s sourcebook did a tremendous service to scholars and students alike by gathering reliable translations of a wide range of written evidence from the Persian empire, replete with supporting notes and bibliography for further reading. It includes substantial selections from Greek historians of Persia, including Herodotus, Xenophon, and the Alexander biographers, but ensures that readers are able to contextualize these texts alongside internal materials reflecting the full diversity of Persian empire and society.
Bringing together a wide variety of material in many different languages that exists from the substantial body of work left by this large empire, The Persian Empire presents annotated translations, together with introductions to the problems of using it in order to gain an understanding of the history and working os this remarkable political entity.
The Achaemenid empire developed in the region of modern Fars (Islam) and expanded to unite territories stretching from the Segean and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and north-west India, which it ruled for over 200 years until its conquest by Alexander of Macedon.
I have a life-long interest in the intersection of the real and the mythical when it comes to travel and adventuring in foreign lands. This has driven my own exploration of many parts of Asia and the Himalayan regions. One tiny nugget of information can take you on a wild journey that leads to great discoveries. Curiously, we keep losing precious knowledge through war and neglect—and then re-discover it. The finest example of lost and found cultural facets has to be hieroglyphics. The meaning of the writing was lost for over a thousand years until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799, which enabled us to decipher Egyptian temple art again. So hieroglyphics entered the realm of the mythical and then returned to reality once decoded.
The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, or at least named in his honour. And Alexander the Great is responsible for wiping out other fabled cities. Most notably, the ancient Persian city of Persepolis, located in modern-day Iran. Finally, a place you can actually visit! But the massive palace lies in ruins, nowhere near its original splendour with all the statuary and furnishings, and the pomp and majesty of Persia’s kings and courtiers—at the time when Persia was a global superpower.
Around 2,000 years ago, Alexander the Great’s troops looted Persepolis and burned it to the ground. And there it lay in the sand, forgotten, until the site was revived in the 1930s and somewhat restored. The site lies in southwest Iran and was inscribed to the World Heritage List in 1979. Given that travel to Iran today is fraught with obstacles, this book about Persepolis could…
*Includes pictures *Includes ancient historians' descriptions of Persepolis and the Persians *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading “By the favor of Ahuramazda these are the countries which I got into my possession along with this Persian people, which felt fear of me and bore me tribute : Elam, Media, Babylonia, Arabia, Assyria, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Lydia, the Greeks who are of the mainland and those who are by the sea, and countries which are across the sea, Sagartia, Parthia, Drangiana, Aria, Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Sattagydia, Arachosia, Hinduš, Gandara, Sacae, Maka.” – An inscription on a terrace wall…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I have gone through the refugee experience, and it has shaped me. I grew up queer in Syria, became a man in Egypt, a refugee in Lebanon, then an author in Canada. At the expense of romanticizing something so deeply painful, I do believe that the experience has made me a better man. It matured me, offered me a deep connection with others within my community, and built an unmatched appreciation of my culture of home back in Syria and my culture of diaspora here in Canada. As a fiction writer, I am obsessed with writing queer stories about immigration.
I only knew of this book because my British publisher introduced me to it. For that, I’m truly thankful. The book feels honest and unflinching and makes for a great read for both myself as an immigrant as well as for those navigating a world where immigration is a constant daily reality.
I read it over a weekend in 2020 and have read it once more in 2022. I had to return to it, especially when I was faced with microaggressions or felt unheard in my new home in Canada.
What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question many of us do not give much thought, and yet there are more than 25 million refugees in the world. To be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the…
I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital.
A best seller from BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner.
MI6 agent Luke Carlton is on a mission to uncover a secret cave system at a military complex south-east of Tehran, in which scientists work round-the-clock on a banned nuclear device, at the behest of ultra-conservative Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Gardner himself was ambushed and left paralyzed by Islamist gunmen, while on assignment in Riyadh. This is a rare thriller set in Iran, although the action also extends to neighbouring countries such as Armenia.
Fast-paced, well-written, and authentic. What more can you ask for?
Authentic, unnervingly current and action-packed, Ultimatum is the explosive new thriller from BBC security correspondent and No.1 bestseller Frank Gardner. Deep within a cave system at a military complex south-east of Tehran, hidden from the prying eyes of Western satellites, scientists are working round-the-clock on a banned device. Acting on the orders of a renegade cell within the ultra-conservative Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, their intention is to propel Iran into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations - and seal its domination of the Middle East.
Britain's intelligence agencies know something is up. They have someone on the inside ready to…
Allison Levy holds a PhD in Italian Renaissance art and architecture from Bryn Mawr College. She has published five books on Italian visual culture, and has taught in the US, Italy, and the UK. She oversees the digital publishing program at Brown University.
This #1 New York Times bestseller grapples with what houses say about who we are—or want to become. Slip into a tragic entanglement between Massoud Behrani, a recent immigrant from Iran intent on restoring his family’s honor by purchasing a California bungalow up for auction, and Kathy Nicolo, the house’s owner, and a recovering drug addict determined to hold on to her family property. This penetrating novel will satisfy readers’ unquenchable thirst for stories that explore the psychological ramifications of emotional and social overinvestment in the promise of a house.
A recent immigrant from the Middle East-a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force-yearns to restore his family's dignity in California. A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold onto the one thing she has left?her home. And her lover, a married cop, is driven to extremes to win her love.
Andre Dubus III's unforgettable characters-people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on-careen toward inevitable conflict. Their tragedy paints a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Richard Foltz is a cultural historian specializing in the broader Iranian world. He holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from Harvard University and has published eleven books and over one hundred articles on topics ranging from animal rights to Zoroastrianism. He is currently Professor in the Department of Religions and Cultures at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada.
Against the backdrop of an unlucky courtship between two young students in today’s Tehran, this entertaining novel uses humour to ridicule the myopic mentality of contemporary Iran’s religious leadership that wishes to see itself as cultured and intellectual.
Truly original, Censoring an Iranian Love Story is an incredibly imaginative yet always charming love story set in contemporary Iran that crackles with wit, verve and social comment: Sara falls in love with Dara through secret messages hidden in code in the pages of books that have been outlawed, but then something quite extraordinary and unexpected happens. Through adeptly handled asides to the reader, as well as anecdotes, codes and metaphors, and cheeky references to the wonderfully rich Iranian literary heritage, the novel builds to offer a revealing yet often playful and hopeful comment on the pressures of writing within…
