Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books | 
| Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  351 reviews
Sales Rank: 2990
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 081297106X
Dewey Decimal Number: 820.9
EAN: 9780812971064
ASIN: 081297106X
Publication Date: December 30, 2003
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Condition: GOOD with average wear to cover and pages. May contain minimal highlighting, inscriptions or notations. We ship quickly and work hard to earn your confidence. Orders are generally shipped no later than next business day. We offer a no hassle guarantee
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Amazon.com
An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes. Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen
Product Description
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 346 more reviews...
 One of the best books I've read in a while July 24, 2008
Fantastic book, not only does she give u a real insight into her experiences during a key period in Iranian history but also serves as a quasi course on English literature...yet remains fluid, wholly engaging and easy to read!
Great history, memoir and lit lesson July 22, 2008
Azar Nafisi was the right person (an intellectual and writer) who was in the right place (Tehran University) at the wrong time (The Iranian Revolution). Having lived in both America and in Iran, she was in unusual position of teaching American Literature at a time in Iranian history when America was demonized as the Great Satan. In soft and exquisitely-recalled detail, she describes her professional struggle to keep her class interested in Western works like Nabokov's "Lolita" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." Her struggle was to remain true to the meaning of the texts at a time when even leftist and secular students saw these works as evidence of Western decadence. Her personal struggles are also detailed, notably her attempts to remain free of the veil at a time when armed thugs and armed government morality squads roamed the streets.
Nafisi's eventual departure from the university prompts her to hold class in her own home for interested students, mostly women. These students come from all over the political and religious spectrum, but are united in their love of literature. Nafisi and her students find themselves drawn into a relationship that touches on their personal lives, proving again the transformative power of literature in even the least hospital climates.
The voice of Nafisi is quiet, deliberate, thoughtful, lyrical and courageous. More headstrong as a young woman, her defiance of government oppression and terror is more measured, but no less strong. But "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is far more than a memoir one woman's experience under a brutal regime. As she details the conversations and arguments that break out inside her classroom, we become more than spectators. We too are in attendance and begin to appreciate the depths that her favorite authors -- Austen, James, Nabokov, Twain and Fitzgerald -- are able to plumb in their novels. Nafisi's skill in drilling down to the bedrock values of these stories, even to the point of finding commonalities between the American novels and the Iranian experience, is surprising and seems all but inevitable.
In spite of its length, I found this book very engaging. The occasional scholarly reflections were often staged as lively discussions among characters, even a scene in which a book was put on trial. A wonderful read for those who love literature and who would like a peek into the darkest years of the Khomeini-led Iranian revolution.
 a mess July 11, 2008
Having traveled in the Middle East this summer I looked forward to reading this book and learning more about Iranian history and society. Unfortunately I gave up about halfway through. My list of complaints is long: Nafisi's writing is terrible and in desperate need of an editor. She recalls lengthy conversations verbatim, ad nauseam. She somehow always comes out being right during the many arguments she has throughout the memoir. The characters are one-dimensional, particularly the men. Her book group (which I foolishly assumed the book was about) disappears and re-appears in a disjointed manner; I never came to care for any of the group's members as they were portrayed. Her comparison of Nabatov's Lolita to the plight of these women is baffling. Most frustrating of all is English Professor Nafisi's manner of shooting down anyone who disagrees with her INTERPRETATION of literature. No, actually, most frustrating of all is knowing that this book became a best-seller and Nafisi received great accolades for it.
Absolutely not politically correct July 1, 2008
59 out of 68 found this review helpful
The author was a specialist for Western literature in the Iran of the Islamic Republic. That was of course a no-no and she lost her university job in 1995. Before finally emigrating to the US (where she is now probably a suspect as a sleeper of some kind), she did a remarkably courageous thing: she continued teaching girls in English language literature at home for two more years. The main message of the book is the story of the lessons and of the fate of the girls in a country that has gone back dramatically in civic freedoms.
I was reminded of this book, which I read a few years ago, by the discussions after I posted reviews of the novel and the first film Lolita. I realized that there are more interpretations of Lolita, the novel, than was mentioned in the discussion. For the group of women who read the book in Tehran, what was in the forefront was that somebody who has been forced to be with somebody that she didn't want to be with, can rise up and escape.
In a way though, Lolita is not really the main subject of the study group. The book ought to have been called Reading the Great Gatsby in Tehran or reading Jane Austen. Both take a lot more space. Obviously the title was chosen by marketing criteria. The title with Lolita sounds more interesting and it has a much better rhythm.
I am as often puzzled by the reactions here in Amazon. Where do all the negative reviews come from? Does the Iran have a fifth column of literate people who can write reviews?
 Reading Lolita in Tehran in Ohio on tape. June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I avoided this book for fear of voyeurism. Abuse of children, or the artful justification of it in even an attenuated form, is not something I want to encourage, and I assumed the point of the title was, How paradoxical to be reading something so naughty with veils over our faces!
Fortunately that was wrong. Nafisi seems rather to be using a story about the exploitation of one girl, as a literary doorway into a society in which all girls are treated badly. That was what I was hoping for, in finally picking up the CD of this book (which I listened to while driving through Amish country in Ohio!) -- to learn more about life in Iran from a sensitive critic of the regime.
Overall, the book is good enough. Nafisi's descriptions of her students, and the other characters, are acute. You do come to understand what life is like for women in the most radical Islamic countries -- at least for women educated to think like Westerners.
But at the same time, I didn't always get the feeling of getting inside the thought processes of another culture, here. Nafisi does not always seem to mediate a general view of life for women in Iran, but more of what an American forced to live among Islamic Leninists (see Naipaul) would feel. Her description of Islam is so uniformly negative, one does not much get inside the head of its proponents -- unlike with Naipaul.
My other complaint was that the book dragged at times. The author has descriptive talent, but sometimes lets it get away from her. Sometimes Nafisi gives the readers too much interior dialogue -- read with a rather gloomy seriousness, in the CD version.
All in all, while good, I'd probably prefer a shorter version of this book. Maybe a printed version, which one can skip forward at times, would in this case be preferable.
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