From the Bookshelf of Topeka & Shawnee Co. Public Library…

[close]
Discuss Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold teacher named Azar secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Books provided, registration required. Call 580-4540. Always wanted to join a book group, but never made the time? If you want to read well-crafted, contemporary, literary works and discuss them with interested readers, then this book group is for you! This month's book is Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azir Nafisi. We all have dreams--things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading--Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita--their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi's account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi's class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of "the Great Satan," she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi's luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women's lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.Published in 2003, 347 pages. Books are available for participants to borrow, and will be distributed at each session for the upcoming month’s discussion. Registration required. Call 785-580-4540 or sign up in person at the reference desk.