Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Customer Reviews

Inspiring in a very understated way

I love personal accounts like those in this book. Azar Nafisi brilliantly weaves the plots and characters of her seven secret literature students with the plots and characters from famous western literature thus the title - Lolita. The author is a former teacher at a Tehran University where she resigns because the revolution and implementation of the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime has made teaching western literature there too difficult. She then teaches this small group of students secretly at her home. She describes how unlikely a group of friends they would be but how much they come to rely on their meetings together to discuss books and circumstances they face day to day and how the characters in the books they read would handle those same daily challenges.

The story is about their two year odyssey with books by authors such as Vladimir Nabokov; F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Jane Austen. These are all books banned by the government and read and discussed after taking off their veils and revealing thir colorful personalities. The veils are a metaphor to me for revealing their true feelings about "morality guards" of Islamic law and the horrors they see as their country is ravaged by the Iran-Iraq war. The author craftily underscores the essence of the book which is that literature and education are the basics of individual thinking and no matter how hard Islamic rule tries to repress individuality it will always flourish even if in secret and even if simply in a small book club.

Great book.

a glimpse of Upsilamba!

Azar Nafisi has written a brilliant, moving, and frightening book. As a professor of English literature at Tehran University, she provides a unique perspective on the Iranian revolution that changed the world.

She considers herself an intellectual. She marched against the west and the USA support of the Shah of Iran. She tells of the joy that she and her colleagues felt at his fall. She tells of the changes in everyday life for intellectuals and for women as the Islamists took over the country. She left her job at the university (a job that she loved) because she refused to wear the veil. She tells of the effects of the eight year long Iraq/Iran war on the women of Tehran, the tyranny of the religious leaders who issue their decrees as though they came directly from God.

Nafisi's story is one of change, tyranny, fascism, and the failure in the 20th century to defend women when their identity and their humanity are stolen in the name of religion. It is also the story of personal courage, intelligence, commitment, and love.

Nafisi lead a book discussion group for a select group of women in her home in Tehran before leaving Iran. The forbidden fruit that they read was Lolita, Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, and the Great Gatsby! They risked so much to do this; they risked imprisonment, beatings, rape, and perhaps execution.

She tells her story and some of the stories of her students through these group discussions. She has changed the name of the women that are still alive to protect them. She tells one of her student's stories. While in prison she knew of guards who repeatedly raped a young beautiful girl. They justified this punishment because their heinous acts would deny her access to heaven. In this interpretation of Islam, only virgins could go to heaven and God has no punishment for the rapists.

We, in the USA, live such safe, comfortable lives even in the wake of 9/11. Our free public libraries, bookstores, and Amazon.com provide such easy access to Nabokov, Austen, James, and Fitzgerald, and yet so few of us read them. We post public reviews on controversial books on Amazon.com accepting the minimal risk of a negative vote. What do we know of the Iranian revolution that in the name of Islam has made women invisible, that has morality police, and bans these dangerous books? Our respect for religious freedom makes us tenuous in dealing with atrocities committed in God's name!

I highly recommend this book.

Note to the author: if you are reading this, thank you for you have given us all a glimpse of Upsilamba!

didnt like it either

I had a few probs with this book.

1. Nafisi talks at length about the vices of the islamic republic of iran - which i wholly empathize with - however, she fails to give substantial background on the how the country reached this state ie. the radical secularism that plagued the country only a generation before, under the 'shah'. And while this seems like a mere detail, its very significant, as it provides a sociological context for the political ongoings Nafisi writes so much about.
2. she seems a bit whiny to me and kind of passive....
3. maybe its bc i havent read most of the books she mentions, but I found her running commentaries on the books a bit boring and tedious. I felt like i was reading a book report or something.
4. the one thing i expected from this book was a heartwarming narrative of female bonding (think female"dead poets society" or "how to make an american quilt"). instead, i found the relationship nafisi conjurs somewhat empty and unsatisfying. i felt like she was trying to take me somewhere and we never got there.

so i didnt really like this book basically.