Top ten novels about women's political awakening

Sarai Walker received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Bennington College. As a magazine writer, her articles appeared in national publications, including Seventeen and Mademoiselle. She subsequently served as an editor and writer for Our Bodies, Ourselves, before moving to London and then Paris to complete a Ph.D. She currently lives in the New York City area. Dietland is her first novel.

One of Walker's ten top novels about women's political awakening, as shared at the Guardian:

Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran by Shahrnush Parsipur (1990)

Parsipur was imprisoned in her native Iran for daring to write critically about virginity in this magical realist novella, published in 1990. With the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat in the background, the story follows five Tehran women who take refuge at a lush villa in the countryside. There a woman is planted as a tree, and another gives birth to a flower. The most compelling character, Munis, is stabbed to death by her brother for “dishonouring” the family, but she comes back to life, eventually escaping her housebound destiny to seek the worldly experience she craves.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue