Publishers are waiting on a ruling in a New York district court case involving an Iranian Nobel laureate and the US Treasury Department.
Shirin Ebadi, who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy of women's rights in her country, joined her literary agent in a suit against the Treasury Department when she found the publishing of her memoirs blocked under a US trade embargo against Iran.
'For many years now, I have wanted to write my memoir - a book that would help correct western stereotypes of Islam. Especially the image of Muslim women as docile, forlorn creatures,' the activist lawyer wrote in The New York Times last month.
'It is my impression, based on the conversations I have had during my travels in the United States and Europe, that such a book would be a welcome addition to the debate about Islam and the west,' she wrote.
Authors from other affected countries, such as Cuba, as well as their American representatives, are also part of the suit, which was lodged in September.
It has always been the law that the embargoes include intellectual property, but the rule had not been enforced since 1988 after an informal declaration by Congress.