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 … 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.
Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran
“Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. 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.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire
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I’ve been planning to read this book for a few years now. I think the main reason is not lack of time (which I certainly lack), but rather the fact that I don’t read books that have almost no plot but knowledge mixed with some emotions.
And I think my mistake is also the slip of many other people who actually read the book and expected to get something else.
This book is neither fiction nor captivating. This is an interesting title for those who come to learn the classical literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Reading the book armed with this understanding will make you enjoy the writer’s excellent analysis. I didn’t implement these tip; so that finally I came to read the book, I did this for almost two months, trying to complete literary gaps that I lacked so that I could enjoy the book to the end.
It’s been a few years since I read this one, but I still think of it as one of my favorites. I tend NOT to read nonfiction books, but I do listen to them. This is one of those books that many Americans should read because we are so uninformed about Iran and the people of that country. I found the author courageous and uplifting and a good example that not all the citizen are in agreement with the government – just like here!
Read 10.23.2015
ally enjoying this book. It took me forever to get into it and then it seemed like it took forever to finish it as well (I started it in May 2007). But there were parts that were really hard to read and it was a hard story sometimes over-all. She lived in a country that made women out to be the bad guys ALL THE TIME.
The story over-all was amazing. I learned a lot about the book “Lolita” that I had never known. I had never read it because I always thought (from what I had heard and was taught) that it was kind of a pervy book, but it is so NOT that kind of a book. Yes, the main character is a PERV big time, but its not Lolita’s fault he is a perv. It is on my list of “to-read” books as soon as I can save the money to buy the annotated one that the author recommends.
I am also going to read Henry James (Daisy Miller and Washington Square….Are you ready Aubrey???) because of this book. AND Jane Eyre. No wait. I am reading Jane Eyre because of Aubrey. Sorry about that. 🙂
If you want to learn about some great literature that you might have missed and read a great book about people who are oppressed in a HUGE way, then I suggest this book to you! It may take you awhile to wade through it all, but I tell you this, YOU will be a different person when you get done with it!
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Re-Read
Book Club Read
2015
I learned way more this time around. This time it wasn’t so much about the literature that they were talking about and it was actually about the story and the girls in the class and the journey that took place in and out of Iran. I still love this book. I love the dynamic and how even though the girls are all so dramatically different, they can come together and study the books they all love, even when they know they are not supposed to love them. I highlighted half the book and marked them with paperclips – you can barely close my book now. It really has made an impact on me.
one of those great books that open your eyes on another country
What I really love about this book are the English lessons that Nafisi was teaching her students in Iran. These moments are interspersed with the drama outside, from the optimism sparked by the thought of overthrowing the Shah, to the horror of the counter revolution
I enjoyed learning about another culture. There was so much hope for progressive freedom and democracy and that all disappeared. The book not only discussed the limitations placed on women in Tehran but discussed famous authors and their books. A very good read.
The best kind of non-fiction, where the story is so well written it really draws you in. An amazing account of revolutionary Iran, and a well-crafted story. I cannot recommend enough!
I enjoyed that the author truly loved the books she taught and made me want to reread almost all of the ones she leaned on so heavily in this book. This book opened up a whole new view into Iran for me. Twenty years ago I had a friend tell me that the young people in Iran were becoming more socially conservative and going backwards and it was very interesting to read now exactly what she had told me then.
Very informative about life in Iran, but I would have preferred more character development and less dissection of literary novels.
I wanted to read about Iran but the book, what I read, was all about the Lolita book
The story the author was telling of her life was very interesting and inspirational. The books she was reviewing (boring), could have left most of that out.
This was an interesting read for me. During the time frame in which Nafisi’s memoir takes place in Iran I was a young mother working on my master’s degree. During that time I followed the events that unfolded in Iran; I was horrified that murder, human degradation, the abasement of women could occur and be justified in the name of their Imam and God. So, in that context I found this book very compelling as it provided me with a first hand account of what happened when Persia became Iran from the prospective of an well educated and intellectual woman.
I also thought it was quite clever of Nafisi to present her memoir through her teaching of classic novels. As a teacher myself, I appreciated Nafisi’s attempts to involve her students and challenge their ways of thinking, even when it was dangerous to do so. Her idea to put the Great Gatsby on trial was a stroke of creativity and illustrated her adeptness in changes things up in response to her students’ perceptions.
In some reviews I was surprised that readers found Nafisi to be patronizing and self-important. I think more that being “intellectual” and superficial in her writing, I believe that her presentation was part of her cultural background to be detached and involved at the same time. I found that throughout the memoir, she was still seeking answers for her time in Iran and for leaving it and the people she loved behind to live in the U.S.
I would have liked to see a little more development of her ‘characters’. I had mixed views about her husband, Bijan, simply because she brought him in and out of her story but did not fully actualize him as an individual. Her friendship with the man she calls her magician also perturbed me a bit. She was with him often, yet she was a married woman in a country were the morality police were constantly hovering. The magician was an intriguing character in her life, yet it baffled my Americanized mind why she did not know more about him. It seemed to me that he was the parent and she the child. Nafisi even called herself a petulant child when she was annoyed with his remarks, but what caused this hierarchy in friendship when Nafisi clearly had such a strong and demonstrative personality? I as any voracious reader love books that are open-ended but with respect to her “girls” (I found that term she often used aggravating), the tidbits Nafisi provided were not enough to fully understand the nature of these women. It was clear she loved them dearly, but her descriptions of their meetings were at times one-dimensional, with an air of detachment and devoid of emotion in her writing.
Overall, I really did enjoy this memoir. A Lolita fan myself, I was intrigued by her analyses of Humbert and Delores (aka Lolita). It is an eye opening read if you know little about Iranian life during Ayatollah Khomeini’s ‘reign’ and is a powerful reminder of how fortunate those of us are who experience freedom personally, culturally, and politically in our daily lives.
I was very disappointed in this book. The title and premise were very promising….but the author repeated herself again and again. In fact, it’s one of the very few books that I put down and didn’t even finish.
Interesting account of life in Iran under current government.