Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books [J0311]

2008 french-flap PB in nice clean condition. 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.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Books allow us to glimpse unknown worlds - landscapes, cultures and societies. Reading about the lives and thoughts of women in Tehran living under a theocratic tyranny at the end of the 20th century, and knowing that the totalitarian oppression persists and has just killed thousands in 2026, gives this insightful book an unfortunate relevance."; "As is this book's stated mission, Reading Lolita expanded my empathy and opened my eyes to a culture hitherto completely unknown to me. It was a joy to read such articulate relishing of the power of good literature to inspire one to confront the unknown, in oneself and the world."; "This text delivers a surgical, high-caliber dissection of centralized authority and strategic policy manipulation. It untangles the systemic friction between top-down governance and raw human self-determination. Structurally brilliant, gripping, and deeply humanistic from the first page to the absolute end."; "What I loved most about this book was the urgency with which Nafisi and her students came to many classics of Western literature. When everything is censured and everyone forced to read through a moralistic lens the lessons of great literature become all the more relevant."; "The best memoir i've ever read, hands down. The way she uses fiction to help contend with reality is such an interesting way of writing history. SO GOOD"