WOMEN OF DEH KOH: Lives in an Iranian Village <i> by Erika Friedl (Penguin: $9.95).</i>

Anthropologist Erika Friedl found enough stories to occupy Scheherazade among the women of Deh Koh, a small mountain hamlet typical of rural Iran. The Islamic fundamentalism instituted by the Ayatollah Khomeini checked the growth of the nascent feminist movement; although women are beginning to receive educations and earn salaries (albeit minimal ones), their behavior remains rigidly circumscribed. Ironically, increasing modernization has shrunk, rather than expanded, the world of the village women. Electric appliances and piped-in water have eliminated the need to visit the communal well, where women met to exchange news and gossip; separate houses are replacing the traditional family compounds, intensifying the isolation of wives forced to remain at home. Overcoming these strictures requires considerable ingenuity. Deh Koh is small enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business, and in a highly entertaining chapter, Friedl juxtaposes different relatives’ versions of how one young couple married, separated and reunited. It’s easy to dismiss these women as ignorant, superstitious, downtrodden prisoners of tradition, but Friedl demonstrates that they manage to maintain a vibrant way of life despite poverty, a harsh climate and largely hostile mores.