Reading Lolita In Tehran: Summary and book reviews of Reading Lolita In Tehran by Azar Nafisi, plus links to an excerpt from Reading Lolita In Tehran and a biography of Azar Nafisi.
Reading Lolita In Tehran
by Azar Nafisi
Hardcover: Mar 2003,
368 pages.
Paperback: Dec 2003,
384 pages.
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.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
Booklist - Kristine Huntley
Nafisi's determination and devotion to literature shine through, and her book is an absorbing look at primarily Western classics through the eyes of women and men living in a very different culture.
Publishers Weekly
This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three. Nafisi has produced an original work on the relationship between life and literature.
Kirkus Reviews
And, without once sinking into sentimentality or making overly large claims for the relative might of the pen over the sword, Nafisi celebrates the power of literature to nourish free thought in climes inhospitable to it.
USA Today - Stephen J. Lyons
..an inspiring account of an insatiable desire for intellectual freedom in Iran before, during and after the 1979 revolution that ... began a period of fervent anti-Americanism in the country.
The New York Times - Michiku Kakutani.
... an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction — on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual.
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
The story of the nymphet Lolita and her guardian/rapist Humbert Humbert strikes different chords in different places, thus reminding us of the limitless power of literature ...
Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire
It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.
Susan Sontag
Her memoir contains important and properly complex reflections about the ravages of theocracy, about thoughtfulness, and about the ordeals of freedom.
Bernard Lewis, author of What Went Wrong?
A memoir about teaching Western literature in revolutionary Iran, with profound and fascinating insights into both. A masterpiece.
Jacki Lyden, National Public Radio, author of Daughter of the Queen of Sheba
... mesmerizingly, she reveals the shimmering worlds she created in those classrooms, inside a revolution that was an apogee of kitsch and cruelty. You will be taken inside a culture, and on a journey, that you will never forget.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Daniel Sure Dry, But Great For Understading Although I must admit that this book is rather dry and I missed some journal deadlines for my High School class by nearly a week, it is a great book for gaining valuable insight into the tyranny the people of Iran have had to live through, and... Read More
Rated of 5
by Jenny Hard and dry reading I had to read this book for an English class in college and I didn't like it at all. I could never get into the readings or the stories she told. It's just not what I would consider a decently written memoir. We also had to read the Complete... Read More
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Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire
of 5
by Daniel
of 5
by Jenny
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