SHAHRNUSH PARSIPUR, born in Iran in 1946, began her career as a fiction writer and a producer at Iranian National Television and Radio. Shortly after the publication of Women Without Men in 1989, Parsipur was arrested and jailed for her frank and defiant portrayal of women’s sexuality. While still banned in Iran the novel became a bestseller there, and has been translated into many languages around the world. Parsipur is also the author of Touba and the Meaning of Night, and now lives in exile in North California.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a French novelist, playwright, and biographer who is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His best-known books inclu
