Reading Lolita in Tehran

What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book

Azar Nafisi

Biography & Memoir

Jul 30, 2018

When the civil and religious strictures of Iran’s Islamic Republic forced her from her position as a professor of literature at the University of Tehran, Azar Nafisi convened in her own home a salon for seven of her best women students. They would arrive each Thursday morning, remove the black chadors required by the government for women in public, and explore the precincts of Lolita, Pride and Prejudice, and other Western novels. Written after she had left Iran for the United States in 1997, Nafisi’s memoir of these gatherings, as well as of her years as a student and a teacher in her native land, is both a telling personal testament and a moving group portrait of women trapped in the emotional and political conundrums provoked by the prescriptions of the Islamic Revolution. Her “memoir in books” is a human story, peopled with characters whose hearts and minds we come to care about; it is, in the end, an altogether astonishing account of how literature can illuminate a private path to meaning even in the most benighted circumstances.

Add Reply

Jane Huttner

May 24, 2020

I really enjoyed this book. I felt so sad for the women in Iran. The laws really restricted the women from feeling free to be who they were.

Add Reply

Dan Cooper

Nov 26, 2020

My very Western daughter studied in a Muslim country for six months and I went to visit her there, I love book groups, I like a lot of the books they covered. I thought all that would make this book irresistable but I ended up quitting it. In fairness I had just read 'Walls Came Tumbling Down' so the injustices and suffering this book is based on seemed a little light in comparison. But in the end I didn't find any of the literary analysis or social observations insightful enough to justify the self indulgence of the narrator. She just seems to believe the plight of the other women in the story somehow raise the banal details of her career and apartment to a level we should be glad to hear about them all. In the end I just wasn't. It was kind of like if you took a not-quite-good-enough work of literary criticism and combined it with a not-quite-interesting memoir would it add up to something which IS good enough? For a lot of people, clearly yes and I'm glad for them. For me, no.

Add Reply

Jessica

Dec 12, 2024

good

Add Reply

Ames

4 d

This book is both a memoir on womanhood, a work of literary criticism, and political commentary. The pacing and structure of this memoir carries the pleasure of a thriller.

We use cookies on this website