Dina Nayeri

Shahrnush Parsipur, the Iranian author of Women Without Men, is remembered as a major feminist literary voice who challenged sexual and social repression. Her banned novels and prison writings addressed autonomy, shame, censorship and patriarchal control, while her years of imprisonment and exile shaped her career. Women Without Men gained international influence through private circulation, a film adaptation and a new English translation, resonating with Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom movement. Parsipur later settled in California, received international literary honors and remained supportive of Iranian women resisting state rules until her death at 80.

The review praises Stolen Revolution as a deeply researched and accessible history of the Islamic Republic, told through six lives spanning the 1979 revolution, reformist hopes, rigged elections, economic decline and the Woman Life Freedom uprising. It argues that clerical leaders replaced the Shah with an authoritarian system marked by gender apartheid, corruption, repression and isolation, while the Revolutionary Guards developed into both a coercive military force and an economic empire. Reformists and entrepreneurs repeatedly failed to achieve meaningful change, and a younger secular generation increasingly rejects religious ideals and limited electoral reform. The 2022 death of Mahsa Amini triggered the most geographically widespread uprising since 1979, but protesters faced imprisonment, violence and continued repression. The book concludes amid the 2025 Israeli strikes, portraying Iranians as simultaneously resisting the regime, surviving external conflict and hoping for its eventual collapse.

Dina Nayeri mourns Marjane Satrapi, whose graphic memoir Persepolis gave Iranian women of the diaspora a language for trauma, repression, cultural displacement and rebellion. She recounts how Satrapi’s work challenged Western misconceptions about Iran, from the intimate lives of women in Embroideries to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising and its demand for freedom of dress, speech, creativity and thought. Satrapi’s death leaves admirers grieving the loss of a writer and artist who made Iranian experiences visible without reducing them to stereotypes.

Martina Hefter’s award-winning German novel follows Juno, an ageing ballet dancer who engages romance scammers online and forms a connection with Benu, a Nigerian man. Although the premise and its themes of ageing, inequality, deception and mortality are compelling, the review finds Juno’s monologues, the central relationship and the novel’s treatment of Nigeria shallow and emotionally distant. The English translation may have lost some subtext, but the reviewer ultimately finds the characters underdeveloped and the conclusion overly explicit.

Dina Nayeri revisits her complicated relationship with her mother, shaped by different cultures, languages and expectations. As Nayeri watches her own daughter grow older, she develops a more understanding perspective on the conflicts between them. The podcast is an archival presentation of a 2023 long read, with a new introduction from the author.

Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur discusses the imprisonment, censorship and social backlash she faced after publishing Women Without Men, whose treatment of virginity, female sexuality and resistance to male control remains controversial in Iran. Now living in exile in California, she reflects on the novella’s international success, its impact on Iranian women, changing attitudes toward relationships and the growth of women’s personal independence. She argues that Iranian women’s rejection of compulsory hijab and other restrictions will ultimately contribute to the fall of the Islamic Republic.

Erin Somers’s novel follows Cora, a millennial mother and overeducated New Yorker who spends a decade fantasising about and discussing an affair with Sam, a fellow parent, rather than acting on her desire. The book satirises anxious, self-conscious middle-aged urbanites whose parenthood, domestic obligations and relentless self-analysis have displaced passion. When Cora and Sam finally have sex, the encounter is awkward and disappointing rather than the romantic escape she imagined. The review praises Somers’s wit, precision and refusal to give Cora an artificial epiphany, presenting the novel as a sharp portrait of a generation afraid of—and desperate for—sensation.

Googoosh’s memoir recounts her rise from childhood performer to Iran’s defining female pop star, her arrest and decades-long ban from public performance after the 1979 revolution, and her eventual exile and return to the stage in Toronto in 2000. The review celebrates her importance as a symbol of lost Iranian cultural freedom and women’s silenced aspirations, but argues that the book’s historical and emotional richness is weakened by clichéd prose, melodrama and an insufficiently skilled co-writer.

Photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer’s Displaced project documents more than 60 people across 12 countries who have been forced from their homes by floods, drought, desertification, sea-level rise, wildfires and ecosystem collapse. Testimonies from families, farmers, fishers and former pastoralists in places including Senegal, Iraq, Mongolia, Germany, Kenya, the United States, Guatemala, Brazil, Bangladesh, Switzerland and the Philippines show both sudden disasters and slow environmental changes eroding livelihoods and inherited ways of life. The project emphasizes that most climate displacement occurs within national borders, disproportionately affects poorer communities and women, and demands urgent action to prevent further loss of homes, cultures and economic security.

The review argues that Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir about her late partner Rayya Elias is largely self-indulgent, emotionally excessive and artistically undisciplined. It criticizes Gilbert’s use of imagined communications, poems, spiritual claims and repeated attempts to recreate the personal mythology of Eat Pray Love. The memoir also depicts Gilbert enabling Rayya’s substance use, paying for cocaine after her terminal cancer diagnosis and struggling with jealousy, rage and a desire to preserve her image as a good person. The reviewer finds Gilbert most compelling when she confronts her own cruelty and mistakes, particularly in the raw account of Rayya’s final days, where the writing becomes funny, propulsive and moving.

Josephine Baker’s memoir, translated into English by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis from conversations with Marcel Sauvage, presents her extraordinary life as a performer, activist and French Resistance spy. The review praises Baker’s vivid, witty and generous voice, her observations on performance, food and daily life, and the memoir’s intimate conversational style. It also highlights her condemnation of racism in Europe and the United States, including her undercover journey through the Jim Crow South. Baker’s observations about Black communities and Jewish landlords in Harlem are described as uncomfortable and potentially antisemitic, with Ijeoma Oluo’s foreword providing necessary historical context. Overall, the book is judged a delightful and compelling portrait of Baker’s multifaceted life.

Omar El Akkad’s book is praised as a passionate, angry response to the Gaza war and as an indictment of Western liberal hypocrisy. Through linked essays, El Akkad argues that Western states present themselves as defenders of justice and democracy while protecting wealth, power and Israeli violence, and that empathy often becomes performative once people feel safe. The review highlights his criticism of both the political right, which openly supports military force, and the left, whose solidarity often remains symbolic. It also notes his rejection of moral convenience, whereby resistance is condemned during oppression but celebrated retrospectively by later generations. The reviewer regards the book as compelling and cathartic, though challenges El Akkad’s claim that art made during genocide must directly condemn it, arguing that creative work can also serve as a means of survival.

Aria Aber’s debut novel follows Nila, the daughter of Afghan doctors, as she comes of age amid Berlin’s nightclubs, poverty, grief and sexual relationships. The review praises the novel’s exploration of Afghan and dual-cultural identity, family trauma, racism, shame, sexuality and the desire for freedom, particularly its treatment of Nila’s relationship with her deceased mother. It criticizes the extended partying and art discussions and finds the final act overly explicit in its explanations, but ultimately considers the book a powerful and essential portrait of Afghan sexuality, family, power and cultural conflict.

Hanif Kureishi’s memoir Shattered collects and expands dispatches written after a 2022 fall in Rome left him tetraplegic. The book vividly records dependence, bodily indignities, grief, humour and the evolving role of his partner Isabella and son Carlo, while reflecting on care, disability, illness and writing. Its immediacy and rawness are moving and often inspiring, but the reviewer finds the work scattered, nostalgic and sometimes overly invested in mythologising Kureishi’s past. Despite these limitations, his humour, honesty and gradual movement toward empathy and acceptance make the memoir powerful.

Sarah Shaffi praises Sarah Moss’s memoir My Good Bright Wolf for its tender, poetic portrayal of childhood neglect, food shame, body dysmorphia and the lasting effects of trauma. The strongest passages immerse readers in the perspective of a neglected child and show Moss reclaiming power through storytelling, books and resistance to harmful treatment. However, the memoir is weakened by frequent apologies for privilege and explicit self-criticism, which interrupt the narrative and seem to anticipate judgment rather than trust the reader’s empathy. These flaws are understood as part of Moss’s trauma, and ultimately do not outweigh the book’s importance or emotional force.

Mishal Husain’s Broken Threads reconstructs the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan through the intertwined lives of her four grandparents. Drawing on memoirs, family testimony, archives and private letters, it combines intimate stories—including Mumtaz Husain’s interfaith marriage to Mary Quinn—with accounts of political and social upheaval in 1947. The book’s Pakistani family perspective gives Muhammad Ali Jinnah a degree of reverence and challenges conventional blame directed at him, while criticizing Jawaharlal Nehru’s rejection of a federal alternative and the unequal transfer of resources to Pakistan. The review praises Husain’s research and narrative skill, while noting that the book’s most distinctive and tender writing comes from her grandfather’s unpublished memoir.

NS Nuseibeh’s essay collection uses the author’s identity as a British-Palestinian Muslim feminist and her ancestor Nusayba, an early Muslim warrior, to explore belonging, religion, womanhood, cultural heritage and the pressures placed on Muslim women. The review praises the book’s blend of personal vulnerability, historical research and intellectual rigor, highlighting its treatment of shame, hijab, motherhood, food, anxiety and the legacy of misogyny in Islamic institutions. It concludes that Namesake is a powerful challenge to lazy stereotypes and an essential contribution to discussions of Muslim feminism, identity and cultural belonging.

Hua Hsu’s Pulitzer-winning memoir Stay True recounts his friendship with Berkeley classmate Ken, who was murdered in a carjacking, while exploring grief, guilt, memory and the difficulty of representing the dead honestly. The review praises Hsu’s vivid evocation of 1990s California and his candid self-portrait as an insecure cultural snob who failed to fully understand his friend. It also highlights the book’s nuanced treatment of Asian American identity, immigrant parenthood, assimilation and the ways Ken and Hsu searched for cultural belonging. The memoir ultimately becomes an act of reciprocity and love, offering Ken the understanding Hsu could not give him during his lifetime.

Dina Nayeri praises Khashayar J Khabushani’s debut novel about three Iranian-American brothers kidnapped from Los Angeles to their father’s Iran. The review highlights the book’s vivid characters, depiction of displacement, immigrant family trauma, and nuanced struggle over Iranian and American identity. Nayeri particularly admires the portrayal of the abusive father and the novel’s emotional power, while criticizing the rushed second and third sections, the underdeveloped long-term effects of trauma on the narrator, and the sometimes excessive use of Persian words. Despite these reservations, she considers the novel a brave and significant achievement for Iranian-American literature.

Dina Nayeri reflects on the clashes between herself and her mother, who grew up in different cultures and faced different expectations. As Nayeri watches her own daughter grow older, she begins to understand their relationship from a new perspective and imagines how their connection might have been different in another universe.