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Things I've Been Silent About

by Azar Nafisi (Goodreads Author)

3.44 · rating details · 1,018 ratings · 244 reviews

I started making a list in my diary entitled “Things I Have Been Silent About.” Under it I wrote: “Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I wrote about repressive laws and executions, about public and political abominations. Eventually I drifted into writing about private betrayals, implicatin...moreI started making a list in my diary entitled “Things I Have Been Silent About.” Under it I wrote: “Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I wrote about repressive laws and executions, about public and political abominations. Eventually I drifted into writing about private betrayals, implicating myself and those close to me in ways I had never imagined.
--From Things I Have Been Silent About

Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country’s political revolution. A girl’s pain over family secrets; a young woman’s discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval–these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir, as a gifted storyteller once again transforms the way we see the world and “reminds us of why we read in the first place” (Newsday).

Nafisi’s intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerizing fictions about herself, her family, and her past. But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed. Nafisi’s father escaped into narratives of another kind, enchanting his children with the classic tales like the Shahnamah, the Persian Book of Kings. When her father started seeing other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother. Nafisi’s complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal, as well as political, cultural, and social, injustices.

Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things I’ve Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a family that spans many periods of change leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, which turned Azar Nafisi’s beloved Iran into a religious dictatorship. Writing of her mother’s historic term in Parliament, even while her father, once mayor of Tehran, was in jail, Nafisi explores the remarkable “coffee hours” her mother presided over, where at first women came together to gossip, to tell fortunes, and to give silent acknowledgment of things never spoken about, and which then evolved into gatherings where men and women would meet to openly discuss the unfolding revolution.

Things I’ve Been Silent About is, finally, a deeply personal reflection on women’s choices, and on how Azar Nafisi found the inspiration for a different kind of life. This unforgettable portrait of a woman, a family, and a troubled homeland is a stunning book that readers will embrace, a new triumph from an author who is a modern master of the memoir.

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Hardcover, 336 pages

Published December 30th 2008 by Random House (first published January 1st 2008)

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Community Reviews

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Mar 06, 2009

BunWat rated it

Shelves: 2009, non-fiction

Well I am giving this three stars for now, and I will think about whether I want to give it more. On GR three stars mean I liked it. Which I did. Oddly, I liked it slightly less than Reading Lolita even though one of my major complaints about the previous book was that it was curiously reticient and impersonal, and this one is anything but reticent and impersonal.

Nafisi, having decided to confront the problematic legacy of her parents, confronts it head on, even if that means bein...moreWell I am giving this three stars for now, and I will think about whether I want to give it more. On GR three stars mean I liked it. Which I did. Oddly, I liked it slightly less than Reading Lolita even though one of my major complaints about the previous book was that it was curiously reticient and impersonal, and this one is anything but reticent and impersonal.

Nafisi, having decided to confront the problematic legacy of her parents, confronts it head on, even if that means being critical of people who she very clearly loved greatly despite their considerable flaws. I respect the unflinching honesty with which she does this. There are some very vivid episodes here. But in the end I'm not sure what it adds up to.

There is a thread in this memoir about a family tendency to see life through the lens of fiction - using poetry and storytelling and literature sometimes to make sense of their experiences and sometimes to hide from or even deny them. This interested me a lot. But as much as it interested me, it wasn't fully teased out into a consistent theme or brought to any kind of conclusion so I just ended up feeling sort of unsatisfied.

Also - as in the first book- I come away feeling that there is a great deal here that I just don't understand. In a number of places she will relate an incident or an occurance and then draw an implication or a conclusion from it that for me didn't follow at all. I feel like I'm not always able to follow the through line even though it clearly seems so self evident to her that she doesn't feel a need to connect the dots.

I don't know if this is a cultural or a personal disconnect, that I have trouble following because we are from such different backgrounds or because we have different natures and personalities. All of which is not to say that this was a badly written or uninteresting book because it most definitely was not. I think perhaps I am frustrated with it precisely because she can clearly write well and vividly and yet somehow she still remains for me always just slightly out of reach and out of focus.

Interestingly in this book Nafisi describes her mother as someone you can never quite grasp, someone who slips through your fingers like smoke, leaving you slightly bereft and at a little bit of loss. It seems to me she inherited some of those traits herself. Yet, again like the mother she describes, she is still a source of great interest as well as frustration.
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Feb 27, 2009

Nahid Rachlin rated it

I liked this better than Reading Lolita. It's more personal and more accurate.

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Jul 21, 2010

ICPL Staff Picks added it

Shelves: anne, nonfiction, staff-picks-blog

In Things I’ve Been Silent About, Azar Nafisi writes about growing up in Tehran. Regardless of living in a country that is undergoing revolutionary change, Nafisi’s parents steal the show in this memoir. Her mother, Nezhat Nafisi, although somewhat overbearing, is a complicated person who is living in the past, but ahead of her time as a member of the Iranian parliament. Her father, Ahmad Nafisi, was mayor of Tehran before the Revolution and offers a perspective into the political establishme...more

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May 26, 2009

Kathleen Hagen added it

Shelves: 2009-nonfiction, 2009-audio-books

Things I’ve Been Silent About, by Azar Mafisi, narrated by Maila Azad, produced by Books on Tape, downloaded from audible.com.

In this book, Mafisi tells us more about her actual life. Her previous bestseller, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” described what it was like to teach in Iran especially after the revolution. This second book tells us about Azar growing up in Iran in an unusual family. Her father was mayor of the town but then got on the wrong side of the Shah and was thrown int...moreThings I’ve Been Silent About, by Azar Mafisi, narrated by Maila Azad, produced by Books on Tape, downloaded from audible.com.

In this book, Mafisi tells us more about her actual life. Her previous bestseller, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” described what it was like to teach in Iran especially after the revolution. This second book tells us about Azar growing up in Iran in an unusual family. Her father was mayor of the town but then got on the wrong side of the Shah and was thrown into jail for three years until he could be cleared. While that was going on, Azar’s mother was a seated member of Parliament, one of only four or five women so seated. Her parents had a strange marriage with her mother being a very strong and volatile woman, and her father giving up and having affairs. Azar’s first marriage was more or less arranged by her family. She was pressured into it, but when it didn’t work, her parents supported her divorce. Azar taught in Iran. She also went to the U.S. and studied in graduate school, plus taught there. At first, Azar and her husband welcomed the revolution and thought it would do away with the monarchy and bring more freedom. They, and all their friends were disillusioned when Iran became a religious state. She spoke of the getting together of groups of intelligentsia to watch western movies, listen to western music, discuss both western and eastern literature, all despite being prohibited from doing so by the government. Finally, she and her husband decided they would have to leave Iran. It wasn’t politically safe for them to be there. She had to leave both her parents behind, knowing she probably wouldn’t see them again. This is a very moving book about family dynamics so complex that she could never tell either of her parents how much she loved them and appreciated the talents she got from them. Writing this book after their deaths was the way she could come to grips with her own feelings. The narrator rendered her voice very credibly. Strongly recommended.
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Apr 29, 2009

Mary rated it

this makes a good enrichment for her book "Reading Lolita in Tehran". she talks a lot about the reading and her study of literature, and her teaching--but the main thrust of this book is personal--her upbringing in an educated middle-class home, with Islam culturally part of the family's life, but mostly secular. Her family quite dysfuncional, especially her mother, frustrated herself and unable to move beyond it, not realizing how much she traumatized her daughter and the ytounger b...more

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Aug 06, 2010

Louise rated it

Shelves: memoirs

An interesting memoir by Azar Nafisi about growing up in the country of Iran. Her mother was a complex and complicated person disappointed in her own dreams of leading a romantic and important life, often creating fictional stories she told to her children which she had come to believe herself. These fictionalized stories were not only about her past, but also of her children and her family.

Nafisi’s father was a different type of person, often mesmerizing his children with classic...more

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Mar 27, 2010

Siggy rated it

I have been chipping away at this book Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi - I think I've been reading it for two months! It's a memoir charting her relationships with her mother and father and as much as I was drawn in by its subject - Dad's death last year has left me thinking about parents in our lives - the baldness of it's revelation has left me feeling a little uncomfortable. I'm not sure about the ethics of it all, the laying bare of families for the world! I think this is the pl...more

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Aug 20, 2009

Bridget rated it

Azar Nafisi details her life, focusing on her imperfect relationship with her parents, the political unrest in Iran, and her love of literature. The excellent writing and engaging story makes the book impossible to put down once a reader has started.

A vast majority of readers can sympathize with Azar’s complicated relationship with her mother, Nezhat, who has a very “Jekyll and Hyde” personality. On one hand, Nezhat is bitter about all the challenges she has endured: her mother died ...more

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Jun 05, 2009

Nicole rated it

Shelves: nonfiction-memoirs

I just finished this book and it was AMAZING!!!

Last summer i read ms. nafisi's first memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. After completing that book i thought I knew so much about this incredible woman's life. I was wrong. She covered a smaller portion of her life in that memoir. That book was specifically aimed at to discuss her experiences during the Iranian Revolution/Iran Iraq war and how it prompted her to take the bold and brave step of teaching students literature in her home sec...more

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Mar 12, 2011

Klaudia rated it

Shelves: 21st-century, iranian, american, memoir

I liked this memoir better than "Reading Lolita in Tehran." This memoir circles around pre-revolutionary Iran. Nafisi hits a lot of good marks for describing certain circumstances that existed in Iran during her childhood, some of which are political and the others which are more personal. One great aspect is when she describes how the Shah was abhorred by the public and had a strict regime, how he outlawed the veil and how her grandmother refused to leave the house because of her reli...more

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Jan 29, 2009

Megan rated it

I loved "Reading Lolita in Tehran" when I read it several years ago. This book is an autobiographical story of the author's life growing up in Tehran. For me, a measure of a good book is one that I think about when I am not reading it. It is a book that beckons me to sit down on the couch whenever I have a few minutes of free time. By the time I got two thirds of the way through this book I realized that I was choosing to read lots of other things instead of the book. Finally I m...more

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Mar 14, 2010

Jafar rated it

I really liked Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, but as I held this book in my hand at the bookstore, I thought to myself, do I really care about this woman enough to read her life story, and does she have an interesting life? I’m skeptical of writers who feel compelled to write their autobiographies without really having anything interesting to say. Even really great writers can write autobiographies that shouldn’t have been written. Nabokov’s was a long yawn. Sartre’s was just absurd and pret...more

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Sep 01, 2009

Maha rated it

This book was a gift from my mother. She and I both loathed Nafisi's first book, Reading Lolita in Tehran; we agreed that it was whiny and trite, trying too hard to turn Nabokov into a metonym for Nafisi's own life.

This book is simpler and more honest. It's not really about Nafisi at all, but about her parents, a political couple in 1960s, '70s and '80s Iran. In particular, it looks at the interplay between their political and marital problems, and the way this toxic mix affected the...more

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine rated it

Family history is almost always messy. When tangled up with revolution, it can get downright chaotic. That Things I've Been Silent About is a less-focused effort than Nafisi's first book, then, is unsurprising. The Iranian exile (she's lived in the United States since 1997) continues to display a masterful touch that merges the personal with the political. She also deploys her sharp literary sensibilities to inform this hard-to-tell story. Almost all the critics point out the book's fragmentary

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Aug 08, 2010

Irwan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, finished

Reading a memoir, at worst, satisfies us the way gossip shows do. We peep into other people’s life and see things similar or different from ours. We take pleasures from mistakes and failures that others do - we learn the lessons or just secretly be thankful that it doesn’t happen to us.

At best, reading a memoir is like being a confidant to a close friend. She opens up her life, her intricate relationship with her parents, and her experience as an individual citizen in the political, ...moreReading a memoir, at worst, satisfies us the way gossip shows do. We peep into other people’s life and see things similar or different from ours. We take pleasures from mistakes and failures that others do - we learn the lessons or just secretly be thankful that it doesn’t happen to us.

At best, reading a memoir is like being a confidant to a close friend. She opens up her life, her intricate relationship with her parents, and her experience as an individual citizen in the political, religious context of her country. And this book is the second one for me.

If I ever become a writer, I guess what she is doing with this book is the scariest thing for me. I would imagine it is not a simple thing for her either. The personal part of the book is mainly about her parents’ relationship — a father desiring to be loved and approved and a dominant mother who denied it — and how the children are affected by the dramas it created. This is summed up beautifully in the first paragraph of the prologue.

”Most men cheat on their wives to have mistresses. My father cheated on my mother to have a happy family life. .... He later claimed that most of his relations with these other women were not sexual, that what he yearned for was the feeling they gave him of warmth and approval. Approval! My parents taught me how deadly that desire could be.”

That paragraph hooked me. Nafisi’s fluent writing shows clearly how she deals with the problems. I suspect that writer’s sensibilities of hers somehow help her as well. She described the people in her life the way novelists would probe their characters.

Her literary references among details of the story being told is natural and even poetics. One of my favorites is when she talks about a birth certificate of the wife of her cousin. They are devout muslims, as opposed to her secular lifestyle, who feel betrayed by the atrocities entailing the Islamic revolution. They joined the Mojahedeen organization and thus become fugitives. “Objects have tears in them”, she referred to Virgil’s Aeneas. The birth certificate (shown in picture) shows her cousin’s wife photo with her dark scarf and no smile, fake name and personal data. The couple has long gone in their escape from the Islamic regime. She wonders how she ended up with this birth certificate alongside piles of diaries and notes: “what tears are hidden in its pages?”

This is probably an example how knowledge of literature can enrich one’s life: rich ways to withdraw wisdoms and beautiful renditions of our seemingly mundane lives. This is my main attraction to this book.

Another interesting aspect is the personal accounts of the historical moments of her country, Iran. How the atrocities of the Islamic regime encourage some of its citizens to relive the pre-islamic, zoroastrian past to withdraw identity and romanticism as a way to disconnect themselves with the present. She presented this point through literature: Shahnameh (Books of Kings). Interestingly, this is also the way she disconnects or escapes from the pains inflicted by the dysfunctional relationship of her parents. Her father told her stories when she was upset by the verbal abuse of her dominant mothers.

As a woman she also experiences the intrusiveness of the regime in the personal space, i.e.: telling women what and what not to wear. She once stopped by a young man shouting “Hey, hejabeto dorost kan!” (hey, adjust your veil!). The simple shouting soon turned ugly when ignored, the young man abused her verbally “We don’t want sluts in this country. Haven’t you heard, there has been a revolution!”.

I am secretly thankful that I was not in her shoes, but I get the message that we should be aware of this kind of atrocities from its earliest symptoms, before it’s too late.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that this is a very well written memoir, balanced in its elements and heartwarmingly depicting a life in the context of a family as well as a country. Oh, how similar the two contexts can sometimes be!
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Mar 07, 2009

Alex Templeton rated it

Another category of books not to read anymore: Books I Think I Need to Read Or I Am a Bad Literary Enthusiast. I picked this book up for that reason (as I am still feeling vaguely guilty about not yet having read "Reading Lolita in Tehran"), but was pleasantly surprised how engaging this book was, as both a personal history and a personal history of being Iranian during the revolutionary period. I found myself a bit lost in the discussion of Iranian power struggles (as I did when readi...more

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Dec 01, 2009

Bucket rated it

Shelves: bio-auto-bio, books-about-books, culture, history, identity, non-fiction, parents-affecting-children, politics, religion, reviewed, women, world-lit

I love Azar's ability (and depth of insight into herself) to show what each of her parents have helped her gain and lose in her life, regardless of how things felt for her as a child. I also thoroughly enjoyed how literature has affected her life. The story here is more or less in order, but Azar does a good job of giving insights at the right time, whether their in chronological order or not. This is the second time recently that I've read about Iran that describes the censorship and lack of...more

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Mar 28, 2009

Krysia rated it

Shelves: memoir

I had heard so many positives about Reading Lolita in Tehran (which I haven't read) and was curious about Iran, since I know so little about the history, so I decided to read this one. I was very disappointed; the novel is dense, yet repetitive, and very complaining. I have a feeling that her mother was quite typical of mothers in Iran, but I could be wrong. The mother and father were passive-aggressive types and enablers of each other. Their relationship with each other and the author didn't se...more

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Jul 30, 2011

Kim rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: history-and-memoir, iranian-writers

I read Nafisi's best known book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, when it was first published in 2003. While I appreciated the work, it did not leave me with a desire to read anything else by Nafisi. While I admired the writing, I had conceived a dislike for the writer. I cannot easily explain why. However, it seemed to me that there was something unapproachable about Nafisi - an intellectual arrogance, maybe - which made me unable to warm to her.

A few weeks ago I became involved in ...more
I read Nafisi's best known book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, when it was first published in 2003. While I appreciated the work, it did not leave me with a desire to read anything else by Nafisi. While I admired the writing, I had conceived a dislike for the writer. I cannot easily explain why. However, it seemed to me that there was something unapproachable about Nafisi - an intellectual arrogance, maybe - which made me unable to warm to her.

A few weeks ago I became involved in a discussion about Iran in a GR group which encouraged me to put aside my negative reaction to Nafisi and read this book. Reading it hasn't made me like Nafisi much better. However, it has given an opportunity to analyse why I had that reaction. It has also given me an opportunity to develop some empathy for Nafisi.

There are a number of things that I really like about this book. First, there's its style. Nafisi's prose is beautiful: elegant, lucid, intelligent. She weaves Persian and western literary allusions into her narrative in a way which illuminates and adds to the text. Next, there's the evocation of a past Iran, with every day events and family history woven into the fabric of social and political history. In addition, there‘s Nafisi’s ability to re-create in her writing a child's perspective and reactions to the events going on around her. There's also - I think - a genuine attempt to be honest and to write an account of her life which goes against the cultural imperative to keep family secrets within the family.

What I like less about the book is Nafisi herself: her elusiveness, her brittleness, her remoteness. To me she comes across as rigid, uncompromising and possibly as someone who would deal with opposition – or more particularly with disappointment or the thwarting of her will – in a manner just as unsatisfactory as her mother’s. In addition, Nafisi makes a point of saying that this work is about truth-telling. Although I believe that she has written with honesty, there are still some things which I don't think are well-explained. One of them is Nafisi's decision to marry the first time. Escaping home makes sense, but given that Nafisi's family supported her desire for further education, it's not clear why she didn't choose to study abroad without getting married first.

I read lots of books about Iran. It's a country and a culture that I love and with which I am familiar. Eight years after reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, I'm glad to have finally acquired a little more understanding of Nafisi and the family dynamics which have influenced her. I also understand what caused my initial negative reaction to her writing. With that understanding, I won't be reluctant to read what she writes in the future.

A post-script: I've noticed something odd. Nafisi's GR biography page states that she was born in 1955. However, given that she was in high school at the time her father was imprisoned in 1963 and was married for the first time when she was in her late teens and her father was still in prison three years later, a 1955 birthdate seems somewhat unlikely.

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Sep 08, 2009

N. rated it

I loved Reading Lolita in Tehran, so I thought I would love this book as well. I thought it was okay.

There is one quote I particularly loved:
"When I think of my father's dream of a happy marriage, I am often reminded of a recurring theme in fiction: how our dreams become tainted by reality, how we can turn them into desperate obsessions for which we sacrifice that essential sense of dignity and integrity that we yearn for when we indulge in a dream." p. 260
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Oct 18, 2011

Savannah rated it

Shelves: for-school, reviewed

I didn't expect much from this book. I'm not that into politics or memoires. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Rather than stick to the political problems in Iran, Nafisi chose to focus on her home life. Her family members could've easily become cliché and one-dimensional, but the author wrote them all—herself included—as very believable and flawed. The reader feels for them all and hates them all at one point or another. The political issues that sometimes crept up also ...more

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Aug 06, 2011

Iris Asllani rated it

First, I did not like Reading Lolita in Tehran. I thought the idea was ingenious, perhaps even brilliant, but was quickly strangled by a string of cliche's, which, unfortunately, followed the author throughout her memoir: Things I've Been Silent About.
One almost wishes she had remained silent. The book is self-indulgent (bordering on narcissistic), petulant, and disappointingly unoriginal. A good portion of the book focuses on her relationship with her mother only to end in the anti-climatic: ...more

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Apr 22, 2010

Danielle rated it

Shelves: non-fiction

I read this to get a look at Middle Eastern life from the inside. Nafisi is an Iranian, now living in the U.S., but who witnessed the Islamic Revolution in the late 70s. That's not really what this book is about, but I'd never read anything about modern Middle Eastern history, so I learned a lot.
This book reads like part factual account of her family circumstances, including her parents' rise and fall of political power in Iran, and part therapy session, trying to work out her conflicted ...more

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Feb 06, 2010

Lorraine rated it

Intellectual Iranian university teacher writes about her life in Iran as part of a privileged, political family. She becomes involved in the Iranian Revolution and changes loyalties as the political scene changes and various factions take power. She lives through the Islamic Revolution, and refuses to wear a veil, although she is not punished or jailed because of her stance. Her writing is filled with disagreements with her mother and literary teachings of her father. I kept reading the book bec...more

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Apr 08, 2010

Evelyn rated it

I suppose I expect memoirs to take me somewhere I've never been, and teach me about a life I'll never lead. Without question, this book fulfilled both criteria.

The author describes her parents highly dysfunctional marriage, in particular her incredibly difficult mother (and thus her own, not especially easy childhood/adolescence) and somewhat ineffectual, overly romantic father, against the backdrop of Iran in the '50s, 60's and 70's. Nafisi also writes about her education outside o...more

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Sep 21, 2009

Cmd rated it

This was an honest and moving portrayal of Nafisi's family relationships and her life in Iran. The fraught relationship with her mother, while affected by the frustrations of growing up in the twin dictatorships of the Shah and the Mullahs, could be transposed in any family. It was also interesting to see Iranian contemorary from a personal perspective. This has been explored before, notably in the "Persepolis" books, but this gives new views and nuances. The only drawback is a find Na...more

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Sep 20, 2010

Erika rated it

I wanted to rate this higher, since it's by a woman (sisterhood and all that) and it's about a subject that should be discussed openly. I enjoyed the history of Iran seen from a girl's and woman's perspective. The book really drives home that not all Muslims are conservative and follow a fundamentalist leader. For that, the book is terrific. I didn't find the story riveting, however, and it often veered into the author's personal grievances with her mother, which I didn't find terribly interesti...more

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Mar 30, 2010

Lindsey rated it

This book was good but certainly not great. Her views of Iran during the revolution and especially the intimate scenes with her family really hit a strong note. However, there seemed to be too much political discussion for my limited knowledge of Middle Eastern Affairs and so I often found myself lost and waiting for her mother or father to appear. Nafisi's account of her parents' lives and her interaction with them was charming and the later parts of the book only got better as she focused m...more

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Mar 21, 2011

Readnponder rated it

I read this memoir because I was quite impressed with the author's previous book "Reading Lolita in Tehran." This book was a let down after "Lolita." Nafisi begins with her parents' childhoods in Iran and chronicles her life up until the death of her parents. Her father had been the mayor of Tehran at one point and spent several years in prison on trumped up political charges. Her mother couldn't get over the untimely death of her first husband and was absorbed with the f...more

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Jun 11, 2011

Megan rated it

I did like parts of this book better than "Reading Lolita", however, I felt almost like this book was indulgent for the author. Lolita had truths and reach beyond the four corners of the book, and while the chronology was often confusing, it impacted me personally much more than this book. I championed the original thesis of the book that the author stated, to expose things left silent and to show how they affected her. Part of that was realized but about halfway through the book, i...more

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About Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi, Ph.D. (Persian: آذر نفیسی) (born December 1955) is an Iranian professor and writer who currently resides in the United States.

Nafisi's bestselling book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books has gained a great deal of public attention and been translated into 32 languages.

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Books by Azar Nafisi

آن دنیای دیگر- تاملی در آثار ولادیمیر نباکف

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Quotes from Things I've Been Silen...

“I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.” — 19 people liked it

“The revolution taught me not to be consoled by other people's miseries, not to feel thankful because so many others had suffered more. Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others. ” — 4 people liked it

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title link	preview: Things I've Been Silent About
avg rating	preview: Things I've Been Silent About Goodreads rating: 3.44 (1018 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2910034-things-i-ve-been-silent-about?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320536372m/2910034.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2910034-things-i-ve-been-silent-about?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi[/url]

Things I've Been Silent About

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