Touba and the meaning of night - Shahrnush Parsipur

When her father dies, Touba - a smart and spiritual fourteen year old - proposes for financial reasons to a middle-aged man. Miserably depressed, she divorces him a few years later, and marries a Qajar prince. This is a loving relationship, but when the prince takes a second wife, she divorces him, too. It seems Touba's fate is to remain both spiritually unfulfilled and materially weak.Alone and impoverished, as the prince's dynasty is displaced, Touba weaves carpets to make money, cares for her children and communes with a dead girl's ghost that haunts her property. As she grows older, Touba is intrigued by politics and her country's struggles with British and Russian colonianism, and above all else, seeks spiritual truth, with a Sufi master. But ultimately the demands of her crumbling household intervene.Replete with juxtapositions of mysticism and historical fact, Parsipur distils eight decades of Iranian history into this enlightening and highly rewarding novel.