Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi (Goodreads author)

book data

16,187 ratings, 3.41 average rating, 2,497 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		16%
4		32%
3		31%
2		13%
1		5%

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published

December 30th 2003 by Random House Trade Paperbacks

binding

Paperback, 356 pages

setting

Iran, Islamic Republic of

literary awards

2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense, and the Europe based Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature.

isbn

081297106X (isbn13: 9780812971064)

description

The memoir of Azar Nafisi a professor at the University of Tehran and how she and some of her students defied the Iranian radical regime's repression ...more

[close] The memoir of Azar Nafisi a professor at the University of Tehran and how she and some of her students defied the Iranian radical regime's repression of women there and how literature can lift the soul.

An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen [close]

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06/04/07

Siria rated it:

(review of isbn 0007178484)

bookshelves: autobiography, by-poc, nonfiction

Read in January, 2007

This book failed for me on a number of levels. The premise of it sounded interesting to me--a glimpse at the lives of women and academics under the totalitarian regime in Iran, arranged around a series of bookclub meetings and analyses of various famous books. But for such a promising concept, and for a book which deals with so many serious and complex topics, it's facile and cliched. Almost alarmingly so, in fact.

The tone was the biggest failing for me. It's smug and self-important....more

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04/23/08

Laurae1212 rated it:

Read in March, 2008

I am a lover of books. I am a lover of history. I am a lover of cultures. Consequently, I expected to love this book. Sadly, I found my dissappointment growing with each page I turned. The premise of the novel was certainly interesting- exploring times, the way that they were viewed, the oppression of women, religious fanaticism and political regimes that adopted Sharia, family, and the overall way that a country grew dissillusioned with iteself through novels was certainly an interesting one. Y...more I am a lover of books. I am a lover of history. I am a lover of cultures. Consequently, I expected to love this book. Sadly, I found my dissappointment growing with each page I turned. The premise of the novel was certainly interesting- exploring times, the way that they were viewed, the oppression of women, religious fanaticism and political regimes that adopted Sharia, family, and the overall way that a country grew dissillusioned with iteself through novels was certainly an interesting one. Yet, the novel failed to fulfill its promise. I was very hopeful at the beginning, I quite enjoyed the section on Lolita, and I feel I would have even had I not read Nabokov previously. However, then, as we turned to Gatsby, that initial love died. Now, don't get me wrong, it had nothing to do with Gatsby itself. I adore The Great Gatsby and F.Scott Fitzgerald. But there was such an abrupt shift in time and place, and even in character- I lost all connection I had to the girls I had grown attached to, and I no longer felt any attachment to the author herself. Suddenly, she started to become very self-centered. Some of her complaints seemed too petty, after all there are problems within every nation, but more than that, it was not that she sought refuge in her books, but that she expected others to do the same that annoyed me. I enjoyed the actual analysis on Gatsby, but I the author grew more and more conceited as it went on. It just continued from there on. The novel continued to offer disconnected snapshots of life, that while powerful, never allowed me to truly emphasize because as quickly as they came they faded. Always there was a fleeing to books. And while I could see how the books connected, none seemed to resonate with the actual problems in the country as much as Lolita had. Gatsby and the failed dream I could understand- by Daisy Miller I was lost. Now, admittedly, I have never much enjoyed James, but I found that besides the point, asI also disliked other sections dealing with books I enjoyed. I was truly hoping for the book to redeem itself with an intelligent and relevant discussion of Pride and Prejudice. It failed utterly. I found the end dissatisfying, less connected than anything previously, and it had even lost what had made it charming to begin with- no longer was there an insightful discussion of novels, nor did I feel anything for the author or even the students much at this point. They were completely removed from me, I saw them through a lens, as studies not as actual people. Since this is a memoir, and these people are all real, this is a great failing. They are people who are supposed to come alive, and I felt as they were besotted with themselves, their own pretension, particularly Nafisi's, was unbearable. There were some positive aspects of the book- it gave me a great insight, if often tinged- I felt Nafisi was too biased, I understand why, but I thought that she regarded all of the revolutionaries as inferior beings, not intellectual in the least simply because they had different ideals- into the Iranian revolution and the culture there, and gave me new insights into some of my favorite novels. I am only saddened that the clear bias and narcissism of the author ruined this experience for me. It could have been a great intellectual and cultural study. As it was, it was merely decent, and while the subject material was engaging, I was wishing for it to end.(less)

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08/01/07

Emma added it

bookshelves: couldn-t-finish-reading

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Sheep

I'm not sure I can finish this book. It's just so boring and self-important. And poorly written. My eyes keep crossing. It makes me angry because I think this COULD really be a good book. It has a good premise, a lot of potential, and it's about a topic I'm actually very interested in and would like to know more about. But instead it's dry as hell and doesn't follow any cohesive pattern--it just feels like a lot of random moments in the life of Azar Nafisi strung together by some run-of-the-mill...more

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

4 comments

06/12/07

Farah Refai rated it:

I was really torn while reading this book. While I appreciated the glimpse into the life of people in Iran, I found it disheartening that the author didn't always take the time to distinguish between the real essence of Islam and the "Islam" of its interpreters. She erroneously interprets Shariah law when discussing a woman's right to divorce, (which is allowed under Islamic law)her right's to an inheritance, her right's to an opinion. Ayishah (RAW), the wife of the Prophet was present...more

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03/18/07

oriana rated it:

bookshelves: phenomenal, read-2007

In case you don't know about this book yet (though, honestly, how could you not know about this book yet?), it is an absolutely amazing memoir by an Iranian woman who was a professor of English & Persian Literature at teh University of Tehran before, during, and after the revolution and war with Iraq. Once wearing the veil became mandatory and she refused to wear one, she was forced to quit teaching, and one way she came up with to fill her time was to gather several of her most dedicated studen...more In case you don't know about this book yet (though, honestly, how could you not know about this book yet?), it is an absolutely amazing memoir by an Iranian woman who was a professor of English & Persian Literature at teh University of Tehran before, during, and after the revolution and war with Iraq. Once wearing the veil became mandatory and she refused to wear one, she was forced to quit teaching, and one way she came up with to fill her time was to gather several of her most dedicated students for a once-weekly literature class. In it, they discussed books like The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Lolita (duh), etc, etc.

This book is triple-layered. The first layer is Azar Nafisi's memoir of the tumultuous times she lived in in Tehran, which she watched go from one of the most progressive, intellectual cities in the world to one of the most restrictive and repressive. You can see many of her friends and relatives, and the different ways people dealt with everything -- from withdrawing completely from society to picking sides and becoming more vocal and fervant about religion, politics, nationalism, etc.

The second layer is Nafisi's memoirs of being a professor of literature in such times, including one astonishing episode where her class actually puts The Great Gatsby on trial to determine whether it is decadent, Western poison... or a work of high art. Not to mention the memories of the women in her literature class, how they coped with the readings, one another, and ther lives in Iran.

The third layer, which for me catapults this book into a work of absolute genius, is Nafisi's theories on and explications of the books themselves, including how they relate to the struggles and culture of both of the above layers.

Nafisi has brilliant theories about literature, and such a clear, inviting writing voice, in addition to giving us a much-needed internal perspective a country and culture that we (Americans) are essentially taught to loathe, makes this one of the most incredible books I've ever read. Three times.(less)

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10/14/07

Kareena rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in October, 2007

This was a tough read. I suppose I would have appreciated it more if I had read all the books that were referenced in this one. And if I studied literature, studied the meaning of every scene, every characterization, every image from the books, I might have appreciated it.

Unfortunately this was much too deep and a serious study of literature. I enjoyed her accounts of life in Tehran and the characters in her book. I enjoyed her personal accounts and her life stories. Unfortunately tr...more

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07/12/07

Lorenzo rated it:

bookshelves: iranian

I've never read Nabokov's Lolita. Frankly, that book has never been on my list. Hence, you can understand how I've not been attracted by the artful title of this novel. What has aroused my curiosity here has been the Islamic Republic of Iran, formerly Persia.

Indeed Iran has always interested me a lot. Amir, my best friend during secondary school had Iranian roots and he is one of the most clever persons I've ever met in my life. I always say that when me and Amir were 12 years old w...more I've never read Nabokov's Lolita. Frankly, that book has never been on my list. Hence, you can understand how I've not been attracted by the artful title of this novel. What has aroused my curiosity here has been the Islamic Republic of Iran, formerly Persia.

Indeed Iran has always interested me a lot. Amir, my best friend during secondary school had Iranian roots and he is one of the most clever persons I've ever met in my life. I always say that when me and Amir were 12 years old we used to talk about arguments I've never found anyone to speak with since I've turned 20. Modern architecture, classical composers, political stuff, computer science and so on. (but we didn't forget girls, of course!).
What a pity we've lost each other in the last years.

Anyway.
Amir used to talk me about Iran too and the same has done a few years ago Ziba a girl with the same Iranian roots I've met while renting her an apartment when I was a yuppie.
Ziba and Amir had described me life in Tehran many times, with their different views, telling me about their relatives there, the rise of ayatollah Khomeini and the fall of Reza Pahlavi. Sometimes they've been critical toward Iran sometimes not.

Azar Nafisi's book makes an interesting portrait of the most turbulent period for Iran's history, in the 70s and in the 80s albeit probably this work is done by a privileged position. In fact the author comes from a rich Iranian family, she has studied and then taught in the US and sometimes she has been accused to have abandoned her country when situation was getting dangerous.

The book itself has two levels of interpretation.
On one hand it aims to explain to young Iranians western literature, choosing perhaps not its greatest books (e.g. The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, Lolita). Nafisi tells about the private lessons she did at her home talking about these books with her students sipping a cup of tea in the meanwhile like they were chatting in a literature club.
On the other hand, professor Nafisi's lessons show the rising difficulties of having a free life in Teheran during Khomeini's revolution when the girls have to hide their bodies from their head to their toes, but they didn't renounce to make up themselves. Someone might say this behaviour was only vanity, but I think it was a way to declare their independence as women, as well and above all.

In this book there are many key moments about recent Iranian's history like the troubles at Tehran University, the destructions of "dangerous" books, or ayatollah Khomeini mass funerals which Nafisi describes better than a documentary. Sometimes "Reading Lolita in Tehran" looks like a counterposition between a laic view and religion, between a wide culture and a narrow fanaticism.

Although this book is not a masterpiece it has been one of the most interesting and open-mindly reads I've done in the last years.

(less)

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10/28/07

Lena rated it:

bookshelves: memoir

In the shadows of all the bluster coming out of Iran these days, I try to remember those stories I've heard about Iranians who do not share the religious fervor of their political leaders and long for a more open society than the one that they currently have. Azar Nafisi's memoir about her life as a literature professor in Tehran the years following the revolution gave me a moving and painful glimpse into the lives of those who chafe under a kind of repression that I can only imagine.

...more In the shadows of all the bluster coming out of Iran these days, I try to remember those stories I've heard about Iranians who do not share the religious fervor of their political leaders and long for a more open society than the one that they currently have. Azar Nafisi's memoir about her life as a literature professor in Tehran the years following the revolution gave me a moving and painful glimpse into the lives of those who chafe under a kind of repression that I can only imagine.

Nafisi was an idealistic young professor when she first returned to Iran to teach in the wake of the revolution. She recounts with clear insight how her own revolutionary leanings and political naiveté gave way to a growing sense of dread as she realized that the political changes wrought by the revolution were much more of the frying-pan-into-the-fire variety than anything else.

Like all good memoirs, Nafisi's account of her own struggles against the growing restrictions placed on her both as a woman and an academic gave me a powerful sense of what it must have been like for those women who saw their freedom snatched away in the name of a rigid ideology. There were many moments in this book that left me with a haunting, visceral sense of events I hope I never experience: the worry that can erupt when a friend's failure to show up for an appointment immediately conjures up images of secret police, torture, and permanent disappearance, or the sheer disbelief at a failed state plot to murder nearly two dozen troublesome writers.

Nafisi learned to cope with the grim reality around her by escaping into the world she loved best, that of the literature she taught on and off at various universities during her stay. During her last years, she ran a private class for female students in which they discussed the works of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and Austin. The lessons she and her students learn from these books are intricately woven through the personal stories of the girls themselves. One might think the veiled women of the Islamic Republic would have little in common with the heroines such as Daisy Miller or Elizabeth Bennet, yet Nafisi's eloquent tale makes clear that the power of literature to help us better understand ourselves transcends borders, cultures, and the repression of ideological systems that cannot comprehend the complex, gray shades of human nature literature is so good at revealing.
(less)

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06/09/07

Naomi rated it:

(review of isbn 0007178484)

bookshelves: воображение, история, мозговая-власть

Read in June, 2007

I read this book while I was down with the flu, which added a dimention to my reading as I was isolated in my room for a couple of days. I read some of the reviews for this book on Good Reads and I must say my experience of this book is quite different from what some other people have reported. Azar's opening two chapters were enough to suck me into her world and engross me. Her reading of Lolita was wonderful and I like the way she able to bring her reading of this book, her reflections on Humb...more I read this book while I was down with the flu, which added a dimention to my reading as I was isolated in my room for a couple of days. I read some of the reviews for this book on Good Reads and I must say my experience of this book is quite different from what some other people have reported. Azar's opening two chapters were enough to suck me into her world and engross me. Her reading of Lolita was wonderful and I like the way she able to bring her reading of this book, her reflections on Humbolt into the context of her own experiences in Tehran. One of the criticisms of this book that I read on Good Reads is that her reading material is too western centric - i.e. that she gives too much praise to the literature of America and therefore might give the American reader the impression that their lit is 'better' than Islamic or Iranian literature. I didn't read her book choices in this way. In a way, because America became such a central focus of hatred for the regime in Iran during the revolution she picked this material to demonstrate how biased and myopic this focus was, and how it failed to see the complexity of American life - i.e. that books like Lolita or the Great Gatsby were not recieved with one interpretation in America and that many of the criticisms leveled at those books in the Iranian context were also been discussed in America - i.e. that they were immoral or had flawed heros.

She talks quite considerably about the difficulty of becoming as she calls it 'irrelevant' in her own country. She describes the constant scrutiny that women get on the streets if they are seen to be too alluring or if they wear 'pink socks' or let their nails grow or have a strand of hair fall out from under her head covering. I was thinking of this in the light of my own 'Australian' context. Obviously my life is not as restricted in terms of what I wear or how I choose to adorn or comport myself in public. In fact, these choices are fairly banal and mundane. Yet, for Azar this restriction caused her to examine aspects of herself and her society to work out what really mattered. Because the system made socks important, choosing to wear pink or striped socks became a subversive act. Beyond the immediate existential questions of how an individual is able to deal with having their public and private lives so micro managed, I also enjoyed her questioning of the effects of these policies on society as a whole and especially her understanding of the role of literature in allowing a person to understand complexity in life as a whole.

I must say, when I read her passage about the 'trial' of the novel 'the great Gatsby' in her class, I experienced a different book than I had read. She managed to inject me with a wonderful sense of excitement and a desire to reread Gatsby with new eyes.(less)

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05/19/07

Nicola Derbyshire rated it:

bookshelves: nonfiction

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2007

This memoir about the power of books in a time of crisis and oppression definitely falls short of the transitive powers the novels it details possess. Though the overall message of the book is a powerful one, its disjointed narrative structure, organized by theme rather than true chronological order, left me more confused than inspired and did not help in my understanding of the bigger picture.

For someone fairly out of the loop as far as politics and world issues go, especially issu...more This memoir about the power of books in a time of crisis and oppression definitely falls short of the transitive powers the novels it details possess. Though the overall message of the book is a powerful one, its disjointed narrative structure, organized by theme rather than true chronological order, left me more confused than inspired and did not help in my understanding of the bigger picture.

For someone fairly out of the loop as far as politics and world issues go, especially issues that started before I was born, I was very confused as to what was going on with the regime in Iran during the book. I could never tell what the separate groups were fighting for, who was in power, or who, if anyone, the author supported. The disjointed structure of the narration, skipping backwards and forwards in time at random intervals, also caused me to lose track of what events were influencing other events and how the people she discussed fit into the grand scheme of things. I feel like some sort of timeline or at least direction to a website for further information would have really helped clear things up in that regard, if an un-chronological narrative structure was necessary to the story.

Also unhelpful to the clarity of the memoir was Nafisi’s inconsistent dialogue notations. At some points she used quotation marks, and at other points she dropped them all together. Whole conversations were contained in single paragraphs, making it difficult to tell who was saying what. This uncertainty left me in doubt about the characters’ personalities and voices.

It was interesting to see how the moral debates in the novels the students read in Nafisi’s classes fueled the debates about what was going on in their own government at the time. Though the best novels always allow the reader to make personal connections, sometimes it is difficult to see how the people in places as vastly different as Henry James’ America and late twentieth century Iran can have so much in common. However, as one of Nafisi’s students comments in her journal, “‘[I]t was good to know that even in a decadent society like America there were still some norms, some standards according to which people were judged’” (199). Though those standards were certainly not the same in Iran as they were in America, the fact that there are rules and conventions in any place at any time indicates that there will be people there to rebel against such rules. Nafisi and her favorite students are the real life reflections of those who defied society in the novels they so cherished.

I found the information and analyses of the books they read in class to be enlightening, provided I had read the book they were discussing. However, in the case of probably half the books they discussed I was lost without a plot synopsis and missed many of the points they were making about the connections to their own culture. I suppose this is less of a negative about the book and more of a reflection on my reading habits and a sign that I should improve them.(less)

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11/20/08

Jackie "the Librarian" rated it:

bookshelves: biography, non-fiction

Read in December, 2008

Azar Nafisi was an Irani literature professor, teaching in Tehran at the time of the rebellion, and she tries to use the literature she teaches to illuminate what happened to her during that time. She is not successful at that, but her life story shines through despite it.I loved all the parts of this book that didn't have to do with analyzing literature. I guess it's a good thing I wasn't an English major.

Before the actual revolution, Nafisi herself had been a radical young studen...more

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11/14/08

BunWat rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, non-fiction

Read in November, 2008

This is not always an easy book to read or to like. Its episodic, it jumps around, at times the narrator inserts herself so thoroughly into the foreground that she's all you can see. The match between the lives of women in the revolutionary republic of Iran and such hoary classics as Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, The Great Gatsby sometimes seems tenuous and odd. At times Nafisi makes pronouncements that don't seem to me to follow from the tale she was telling.

But I think its...more This is not always an easy book to read or to like. Its episodic, it jumps around, at times the narrator inserts herself so thoroughly into the foreground that she's all you can see. The match between the lives of women in the revolutionary republic of Iran and such hoary classics as Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, The Great Gatsby sometimes seems tenuous and odd. At times Nafisi makes pronouncements that don't seem to me to follow from the tale she was telling.

But I think its actually the things that make it difficult that also make it rewarding. This is what it says it is; A Memoir. Its not a polished and orderly explication of the political and social history of modern Iran. Its a very personal evocation of one woman's jumbled, confusing, contradictory, and difficult experience of a painful time that she survived in part through studying great literature with other women. At the time of this writing I don't think she had yet entirely made sense of that experience and so it takes some work on the reader's part to try to comprehend the confusion.

In the end I failed to entirely create order out of the chaos but honestly I think it would be less of a book if I had succeeded. How do you make sense of life in a country in which the movie censor is blind, in which proctors monitor a concert to be certain no one including the musicians, shows too much enthusiasm. How can you make sense of a place in which some people are executed for some minor infraction, some simply vanish for reasons unknown, while others escape punishment entirely. But this is your homeland, a place you loved, had great hopes for and eventually find it necessary to leave.

To make a polished orderly story out of this would I think be dishonest to the experience. So somehow the jumble and the confusion and the strange connections all work for me. I don't feel I read a textbook about Iran I feel that I met one Iranian woman. Flawed in places but interesting and challenging and something I walk away from still thinking hard. (less)

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05/06/08

Aran rated it:

bookshelves: about-lit, school-books-forever

Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran is a window into the lives of a few Iranian women living within the confines of the Islamic Regime, namely, Nafisi and her female students. While the memoir seeks to characterize life under the Islamic Regime through the lens of four classics of western literature, it is still difficult for the book’s intended audience (the western reader), to fully comprehend the act of reading, analyzing and discussing forbidden, “decadent” western novels in...more

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05/10/07

suz rated it:

Read in July, 2005

recommends it for: Americans interested in understanding Iran

Reviewer: L. Shirley "Laurie's Boomer Views" from Amazon

Imagine...Having to hide a satellite dish for fear of being arrested and thrown in prison,having to hide your face with a veil,your body with a robe,your head with a scarf,and God help you if a couple of loose strands of hair are sticking out. Imagine living under such a strict regime that a woman can not walk down the street with a man who is not her husband,father or brother,of having to scramble to differen...more Reviewer: L. Shirley "Laurie's Boomer Views" from Amazon

Imagine...Having to hide a satellite dish for fear of being arrested and thrown in prison,having to hide your face with a veil,your body with a robe,your head with a scarf,and God help you if a couple of loose strands of hair are sticking out. Imagine living under such a strict regime that a woman can not walk down the street with a man who is not her husband,father or brother,of having to scramble to different tables in a restaurant where a raid is going on, if you are sitting with a man who is just a friend. Imagine being subjected to body searches for no reason, of being jailed and quite possibly executed for having an opinion not accepted by that regime.Imagine the books you love, great and classic literature by Nabokov,Austen,James,and Fitzgerald, hard to come by and considered evil propaganda. And if fearing what your own countrymen can do to you is not enough, now imagine all that, with bombs going off constantly for years, landing so close they flatten your neighbors house and kill everyone in it. This was everyday life, a battleground of fear from all sides, for professor and intellectual Azar Nafisi. She only wanted to read, teach and discuss her favorite works of fiction.

Those are just a few of the injustices and life threatening situations, described in "Reading Lolita In Tehran".
After refusing to wear a veil to her job as a teacher of Literature, sticking to her own agenda of books considered controversial, Nafisi formed her own little group of women to study the great books mentioned above. She considered them "her girls", like an Iranian Miss Jean Brodie. They discussed the great works of Lolita, The Great Gatsby(this one was put on trial by her class at the University - imagine putting Gatsby on trial!), Pride and Prejudice among others, as they met in secret at Nafisi's home sans the robes and veils revealing their jeans and bright colored T-shirts, along with their inner most thoughts. They saw themselves as the heroines of the fiction they read. They discussed their sometimes unimaginable situations,their deep faith,the deaths of their friends, and the political times they lived in.

Azar Nafisi writes of how this group came to be, how these young women defied authority by studying unacceptable fiction. The girls themselves each have quite a background and stories of chilling experiences. Considering themselves lucky for only getting 5 years in prison for expressing their opinions instead of death in some cases.You can't help but feel a bond with each one of them. Nafisi also takes us back to the years before the group. She writes of life of in the "Islamic Republic of Iran",of teaching at the University of Tehran, and the extreme authoritative figures that ruled. Her writing seems to go off on tangents and some times it is a while before we are brought back full circle to the point, but I have to say, that every word she writes seems important to this story, and well worth reading through. She brilliantly interweaves the theme and characters of the books with the way of life in Iran.

This book left me deep in thought about the things I read in it. It was an up close and personal look at life we've heard about, but always seemed so far away. It not only touched me deeply and emotionally but I learned so much about the history and politics of the country as well. It certainly made me appreciate my own life much more.

Highly recommended read for everyone, and may be an especially deep discussion for book club groups.
It is quite a bit to absorb, but one that I will read again someday...Enjoy the read...Laurie
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08/19/08

Kali rated it:

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in January, 2009

An uncommon approach to memoir writing, the events in the author’s life are informed by and intertwined with great works of 19th & 20th century literature. Nafisi is a professor of literature in Tehran who records her experiences at the time of the revolution. She claims that she is more of a rebel than an activist. This is true within her context. However, as a citizen who attends organizing meetings & protests & loses her job because she defies oppressive laws, her civic involvement is m...more An uncommon approach to memoir writing, the events in the author’s life are informed by and intertwined with great works of 19th & 20th century literature. Nafisi is a professor of literature in Tehran who records her experiences at the time of the revolution. She claims that she is more of a rebel than an activist. This is true within her context. However, as a citizen who attends organizing meetings & protests & loses her job because she defies oppressive laws, her civic involvement is miles ahead of the average North American or European. She stresses the point that she and her countrymen & women must shoulder the blame for what happened during and after the revolution, because they allowed it to happen. As one of her friends says, “people get what they deserve”. That immediately brought to mind the long nightmare of the U.S. under Bush. The U.S. is now in a shambles because people allowed it to happen. Imagine if the mass of people who poured into the streets to celebrate Obama’s victory had been out there demanding impeachment all the while that the Bush regime has been destroying the Constitution, deregulating the economy, & committing impeachable offenses to get us into wars of conquest! Another parallel I couldn’t help but notice is how the Islamic regime in Iran & the Bush administration use the same types of justification for torture & the instatement of Orwellian laws.

Nafisi makes a distinction between Islam as a spiritual path & Islam in the service of a political ideology. She criticizes the hijacking of the religion in the name of political goals. Reading her descriptions of the Islamic regime, I was struck by how much fundamentalist Muslims & fundamentalist Christians have in common. The same obsession with policing women, sexuality, and the imagination. The same stark, humorless, black & white view of the world, leaving no room for subtlety or ambiguity. If right wing Christian fundamentalists took over a western nation, it would probably be a scenario similar to what happened in Iran (goodbye Harry Potter, birth control, & evolutionary theory). I lived in three predominantly Muslim countries for a total of nine years & as a female I definitely chafed under some of the restrictive aspects of those societies, but never experienced anything like what the women in this book have to live with. As the narrative progresses, more rights are taken away & new discriminatory laws are imposed until the simplest pleasures, like feeling wind & sun on your skin, or socializing with friends become impossible. Scattered throughout are memorials to the dead and testaments to women and men whose potential has been thwarted. I’ll be thinking about these people for a long time.

Some goodreads reviewers dislike this book (NOT a novel, by the way), complaining that the story is hard to follow, the literary analysis is mediocre, etc. I found it quite engaging & easy to follow, with accessible characters. I don’t particularly go for non-contemporary literature. I find pre-feminist settings to be suffocating & have only read 2 of the books Nafisi included. So I can’t make a very informed comment on her analysis, but it worked for me. She conveys her love of literature with such passion that I considered reading some of her beloved novels. My focus on politics in this review actually goes against the author’s frustration with the inability of some of her students to read the literature for its own sake. She always comes back to the importance of the imagination as vital to human integrity and survival.

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07/17/08

J rated it:

Read in November, 2006

From its provoking, intriguing title to its very last page, Azar Nafisi's book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, partly a narrative biography, partly a history of a nation and its people, and partly critical analysis of great American and British authors, is astonishing, enlightening, and important. Much like Marjane Satrapi's amazing graphic novels, Nafisi pulls back the headscarves, the long black robes dictated by the Guardian Council, to show us the modern women of Iran and how they fight to mainta...more

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04/08/08

Claudia rated it:

Read in April, 2008

To me, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, is a story about the search and struggle for identity. How much of who we are is dictated by our surroundings and how much comes from within? A former English lit. professor in Iran, Azar Nafisi, invites various "girls" to a weekly, private class in her home to discuss literature. Their conversations change over time to discussions of a more intimate and personal nature as these children of the revolution struggle to understand who...more To me, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, is a story about the search and struggle for identity. How much of who we are is dictated by our surroundings and how much comes from within? A former English lit. professor in Iran, Azar Nafisi, invites various "girls" to a weekly, private class in her home to discuss literature. Their conversations change over time to discussions of a more intimate and personal nature as these children of the revolution struggle to understand who they are and what they want in life. In a country where women, at that time, were incredibly oppressed, most of the girls' lives have been controlled by others. What they wear, how they act, whom they associate with. The books become their freedom. Their escape. The other world where they are free because their imaginations are free.

Prior to reading this book, my knowledge of Iranian history was poor. Even worse, my concept of how the political forces impacted individual lives was pretty much nonexistent. I gained valuable insight into the struggle to cope in an oppressive, and sometimes violent, situation.

Nafisi weaves mini lectures about literature through the stories about the girls and her life during the revolution. I found these frustrating, probably mostly due to the fact that my memory of the novels she comments on has faded. These segments came across very college lecture-y, which I wasn't prepared for, and I felt like a student who didn't finish her homework before coming to class. (And am a little embarrassed that I don't have a better recollection of the works that I read in High School. Sorry, Miss Bagley...) Perhaps I will pick up some of the classics again and refresh myself with the stories so as to better appreciate the value of these lectures.

I'm not one for epilogues, and rarely read them. But, I finished this book during a sleepless night and needed more pages to help lull me back to sleep. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the girls started at my alma mater, Rice University, to work on a PhD the year after I graduated. That makes the book even more special. And, somehow, it makes me feel good.(less)

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02/01/08

Liz rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in February, 2008

I have really mixed feelings about this book. Seeing as it is a best seller you would expect it to be amazing but I have to say that I was not impressed with the writing style at all. It seemed forced and strangely put together... something you would not expect from an author who is so highly educated.

In addition to that the book seemed to be filled with so much propaganda that it was hard for me to ignore it and focus on the authors memoir without feeling that she was trying to push...more

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09/14/07

Casey rated it:

bookshelves: biographynmemoir, womensstudies

recommended to Casey by: Grandma

Passages that provoked various reactions...

p. 30 - "She was talking about the teacher who taught Islamic morality and translation. A Pillsbury Dough Boy personality, she said. Three months after his wife's death, he had married her younger sister, because a man - and here Yassi lowerwed her voice - a man has special needs.

Then her voice took on a serious tone as she began to describe his recent lecture on the difference between Islam and Christianity. She now becam...more Passages that provoked various reactions...

p. 30 - "She was talking about the teacher who taught Islamic morality and translation. A Pillsbury Dough Boy personality, she said. Three months after his wife's death, he had married her younger sister, because a man - and here Yassi lowerwed her voice - a man has special needs.

Then her voice took on a serious tone as she began to describe his recent lecture on the difference between Islam and Christianity. She now became the dough-faced little man standing by the blackboard, pink chalk in one hand, white chalk in the other. On one side he had written, in large white letters, MUSLIM GIRL, and drawn a vertical line in the middle of the board. On the other side, in large pink letters, he wrote CHRISTIAN GIRL. He had then asked the class if they knew the differences between the two. One was a virgin, he said at last, after an uncomfortable silence, white and pure, keeping herself for her husband and her husband only. her power came from her modesty. The other, well, there was not much one could say about her except that she was not a virgin. To Yassi's surprise, the two girls behind her, both active members of the Muslim Students' Association, had started to giggle, whispering, No wonder more and more Muslims are converting to Christianity."

p. 111 - (discussing The Great Gatsby) ... 'In retrospect it appears strange to me only now, as I write about it, that as I was standing there in that classroom talking about the American dream, we could hear from outside, beneath the window, the loudspeakers broadcasting songs whose refrain was, "Marg bar Amrika!" - "Death to America!"

A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.'

p. 234 - 'The place where the regime tried to keep its hold, ironically, was in the realm of our imagination. Television was saturated with documentaries on the two world wars. As the now almost empty streets of Tehran became livelier and more colorful, on television we saw Londoners searching for food in garbage cans or huddled together in underground shelters. We were told about how the people of Stalingrad and Leningrad had survived the harsh siege of their cities on a diet of their comrades' flesh. This was not only to justify an increasingly unpopular and desperate war, whose end the regime had refused to contemplate until it had "liberated" the whole of Iraq. It was also aimed at intimidating and controlling a restive population, by holding up the prospect of even greater misfortune, and by reminding us that all had once not been so well on the Western front.' (Emphasis mine. Sounds familiar...)

p. 330 - 'First, none of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. And second, you always talk about the effect of "these people" on you. Have you ever thought about your effect on them?'(less)

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07/15/07

Heather rated it:

(review of isbn 1402590849)

Read in July, 2007

I really would have liked to have seen a lot less "Reading Lolita" and a lot more "in Tehran." I've tried to read this book at least three times over the past three years and each time couldn't muster the energy to plow through it. I think the only reason I made it through this time was because of my long commute and the threat of being due back at the library soon.

As I said above, the parts of the book that dealt with the socio-political landscape of the Isla...more I really would have liked to have seen a lot less "Reading Lolita" and a lot more "in Tehran." I've tried to read this book at least three times over the past three years and each time couldn't muster the energy to plow through it. I think the only reason I made it through this time was because of my long commute and the threat of being due back at the library soon.

As I said above, the parts of the book that dealt with the socio-political landscape of the Islamic Republic of Iran - how it changed so drastically in such a short period of time, how the revolution played out, how the various political decrees affected the lives of women close to the author, how basic rights were chiseled away with little resistance, the various actors at play during the transition between a post-colonial/monarchical ruling body and a theocracy, the role of students in political movements - were absolutely fascinating and, in my view, well-written.

On the other hand, the author is a professor of literature and wanted to write about that...which may or may not interest the reader. Each time I tried to read this book, I felt as though there should have been a required reading list prior to picking up "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Though the author chastises intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism, the book is far from accessible. Furthermore, I felt a bit duped because I felt that the book is marketed as a text exploring the socio-political landscape of Iran (see above) and not a tedious, scholarly literary critique.

Admittedly, I was humbled by the fact that these Iranian students coveted their copies of foreign literature so deeply and I, one who has so many opportunities to read the classics to which they refer (no doubt even cost-free if I comb through the library's dustiest of shelves or inexpensive in paperback), have not read most of them. It did encourage me to add some of the classics cited in the book to my "to-read" list. What it didn't encourage me to do is recommend this book to others without the warning that it is, first and foremost, a academic literary critique.(less)

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quotes from this book

"Such an act [testifying for an accused prison guard of the Shah's regime] can only be accomplished by someone who is engrossed in literature, has learned that every individual has different dimensions to his personality.... Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them.... If we have learned this one lesson from Dr. A our society would have been in a much better shape today." More quotes...