Women Without Men

The book was more interesting to me due to the fact of its publishing and what the author had to go through than the actual book (though the endnotes in my copy about the real-life people she had based the characters on were fascinating as well).

This is a series of interconnected magical realism short stories about the ways that women are oppressed in Iran (and elsewhere). A woman is fired from her job after refusing advances from her boss. A woman is murdered by her brother because she left the house without his permission. Two women are attacked on the road for the crime of being unaccompanied women who want to explore the world. A woman who had been sold into prostitution as a teenager starts having strange visions. A woman with big dreams accidentally kills her awful husband in what she thinks is self-defence. They are all eventually drawn to the same place where they live together briefly and then all go their separate ways. The ending kind of disappointed me for that reason. I was hoping to see them find a new way together but they couldn't get along.