Writing Novels in Tehran

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.

Yes, you read that right, 370.

370 women have published novels in Iran.

This is considered huge.

Bizarre how something that seems so small is perceived as being so huge. It doesn't take a lot of people to make everybody else uncomfortable.

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.

Because if God wanted us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way.

Interesting little article. I find it fascinating that so many husbands have trouble with their wives making money this way. Women holding jobs and earning their own income is totally OK as per the Quran.

Oh, I'm sorry, you're not ruling your fundamentalist Islamic country based on the Quran? Dare I say you're skewing it for your own ends?

Blasphemy.