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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Paperback – Deckle Edge, November 4, 2008

by Azar Nafisi (Author)

4.2 1,694 ratings

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.

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

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication date

November 4, 2008
Dimensions

5.6 x 1 x 8.2 inches
ISBN-10

9780812979305
ISBN-13

978-0812979305
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative
powers of fiction–on the refuge from ideology that art can
offer to those living under tyranny, and art’s affirmative and subversive
faith in the voice of the individual.”
–MICHIKO KAKUTANI, The New York Times

“[A] vividly braided memoir . . . Anguished and glorious.”
–CYNTHIA OZICK, The New Republic

“Certain books by our most talented essayists . . . carry inside their covers
the heat and struggle of a life’s central choice being made and the
price being paid, while the writer tells us about other matters, and
leaves behind a path of sadness and sparkling loss. Reading Lolita in
Tehran is such a book.” –MONA SIMPSON, The Atlantic Monthly

“A poignant, searing tale about the secret ways Iranian women defy the
regime. . . . [Nafisi] makes you want to rush back to all these books to
experience the hidden aspects she’s elucidated.” –Salon

“A quietly magnificent book . . . [Nafisi’s] passion is irresistible.”
–LA Weekly

“Azar Nafisi’s memoir makes a good case for reading the classics of
Western literature no matter where you are. . . . [Her] perspective on
her students’ plight, the ongoing struggle of Iranian citizens, and her
country’s violent transformation into an Islamic state will provide
valuable insights to anyone interested in current international events.”
–HEATHER HEWETT, The Christian Science Monitor

“An intimate memoir of life under a repressive regime and a celebration
of the vitality of literature . . . as rich and profound as the novels
Nafisi teaches.” –The Miami Herald

“An inspiring account of an insatiable desire for intellectual freedom.”
–USA Today

“Transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history,
though it is superb as all three . . . Nafisi has produced an original
work on the relationship between life and literature.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Nafisi’s passion for books is infectious, and her description of the
effect of the revolution on its people is unforgettable.”
–Rocky Mountain News

“[A] sparkling memoir . . . a spirited tribute both to the classics of
world literature and to resistance against oppression.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Nafisi artfully intertwines her own coming-of-age in pre-Revolutionary
Tehran with the daily frustrations of her pupils. . . . [She] relates her
girls’ moving stories with great sympathy.” –Entertainment Weekly

“[Nafisi] reminds us why we read in the first place.” –Newsday

“As timely as it is well-written . . . As the world seems to further divide
itself into them and us, Nafisi reminds her readers of the folly of
thinking in black and white.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Readers will have a new appreciation for the worn Nabokov and James
titles on their bookshelves after reading Nafisi’s engaging memoir.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Nafisi’s writing has painterly qualities. . . . She is able to capture a
moment and describe it with ease and melancholy. . . . Reading Lolita in
Tehran is much more than a literary memoir; it becomes a tool for
teaching us how to construe literature in a new, more meaningful
way.” –Library Journal

“Brilliant . . . So much is right with this book, if not with this world.”
–The Boston Globe

“I was enthralled and moved by Azar Nafisi’s account of how she defied,
and helped others to defy, radical Islam’s war against women.
Her memoir contains important and properly complex reflections
about the ravages of theocracy, about thoughtfulness, and about the
ordeals of freedom–as well as a stirring account of the pleasures and
deepening of consciousness that result from an encounter with great
literature and with an inspired teacher.” –SUSAN SONTAG

“A memoir about teaching Western literature in revolutionary Iran,
with profound and fascinating insights into both. A masterpiece.”
–BERNARD LEWIS, author of What Went Wrong?

“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 and Year of Wonders

“When I first saw Azar Nafisi teach, she was standing in a university
classroom in Tehran, holding a bunch of red fake poppies in one hand
and a bouquet of daffodils in the other, and asking, what is kitsch?
Now, mesmerizingly, she reveals the shimmering worlds she created
in those classrooms, inside a revolution that was an apogee of kitsch
and cruelty. Here, people think for themselves because James and
Fitzgerald and Nabokov sing out against authoritarianism and repression.
You will be taken inside a culture, and on a journey, that you will
never forget.” –JACKI LYDEN, author of Daughter of the
Queen of Sheba

About the Author

AZAR NAFISI is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women-to teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction. One persistent male student, although barred from our class, insisted on his rights. So he, Nima, read the assigned material, and on special days he would come to my house to talk about the books we were reading.

I often teasingly reminded my students of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and asked, Which one of you will finally betray me? For I am a pessimist by nature and I was sure at least one would turn against me. Nassrin once responded mischievously, You yourself told us that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ. Manna pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they, well, they were what they were. She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth. Yet I suppose that if I were to go against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or even 1984 but perhaps Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading or better yet, Lolita.

A couple of years after we had begun our Thursday-morning seminars, on the last night I was in Tehran, a few friends and students came to say good-bye and to help me pack. When we had deprived the house of all its items, when the objects had vanished and the colors had faded into eight gray suitcases, like errant genies evaporating into their bottles, my students and I stood against the bare white wall of the dining room and took two photographs.

I have the two photographs in front of me now. In the first there are seven women, standing against a white wall. They are, according to the law of the land, dressed in black robes and head scarves, covered except for the oval of their faces and their hands. In the second photograph the same group, in the same position, stands against the same wall. Only they have taken off their coverings. Splashes of color separate one from the next. Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same.

The one to the far right in the second photograph is our poet, Manna, in a white T-shirt and jeans. She made poetry out of things most people cast aside. The photograph does not reflect the peculiar opacity of Manna's dark eyes, a testament to her withdrawn and private nature.

Next to Manna is Mahshid, whose long black scarf clashes with her delicate features and retreating smile. Mahshid was good at many things, but she had a certain daintiness about her and we took to calling her "my lady." Nassrin used to say that more than defining Mahshid, we had managed to add another dimension to the word lady. Mahshid is very sensitive. She's like porcelain, Yassi once told me, easy to crack. That's why she appears fragile to those who don't know her too well; but woe to whoever offends her. As for me, Yassi continued good-naturedly, I'm like good old plastic; I won't crack no matter what you do with me.

Yassi was the youngest in our group. She is the one in yellow, bending forward and bursting with laughter. We used to teasingly call her our comedian. Yassi was shy by nature, but certain things excited her and made her lose her inhibitions. She had a tone of voice that gently mocked and questioned not just others but herself as well.

I am the one in brown, standing next to Yassi, with one arm around her shoulders. Directly behind me stands Azin, my tallest student, with her long blond hair and a pink T-shirt. She is laughing like the rest of us. Azin's smiles never looked like smiles; they appeared more like preludes to an irrepressible and nervous hilarity. She beamed in that peculiar fashion even when she was describing her latest trouble with her husband. Always outrageous and outspoken, Azin relished the shock value of her actions and comments, and often clashed with Mahshid and Manna. We nicknamed her the wild one.

On my other side is Mitra, who was perhaps the calmest among us. Like the pastel colors of her paintings, she seemed to recede and fade into a paler register. Her beauty was saved from predictability by a pair of miraculous dimples, which she could and did use to manipulate many an unsuspecting victim into bending to her will.

Sanaz, who, pressured by family and society, vacillated between her desire for independence and her need for approval, is holding on to Mitra's arm. We are all laughing. And Nima, Manna's husband and my one true literary critic-if only he had had the perseverance to finish the brilliant essays he started to write-is our invisible partner, the photographer.

There was one more: Nassrin. She is not in the photographs-she didn't make it to the end. Yet my tale would be incomplete without those who could not or did not remain with us. Their absences persist, like an acute pain that seems to have no physical source. This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences.

When I see Nassrin in my mind's eye, she's slightly out of focus, blurred, somehow distant. I've combed through the photographs my students took with me over the years and Nassrin is in many of them, but always hidden behind something-a person, a tree. In one, I am standing with eight of my students in the small garden facing our faculty building, the scene of so many farewell photographs over the years. In the background stands a sheltering willow tree. We are laughing, and in one corner, from behind the tallest student, Nassrin peers out, like an imp intruding roguishly on a scene it was not invited to. In another I can barely make out her face in the small V space behind two other girls' shoulders. In this one she looks absentminded; she is frowning, as if unaware that she is being photographed.

How can I describe Nassrin? I once called her the Cheshire cat, appearing and disappearing at unexpected turns in my academic life. The truth is I can't describe her: she was her own definition. One can only say that Nassrin was Nassrin.

For nearly two years, almost every Thursday morning, rain or shine, they came to my house, and almost every time, I could not get over the shock of seeing them shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color. When my students came into that room, they took off more than their scarves and robes. Gradually, each one gained an outline and a shape, becoming her own inimitable self. Our world in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of black-scarved, timid faces in the city that sprawled below.

The theme of the class was the relation between fiction and reality. We read Persian classical literature, such as the tales of our own lady of fiction, Scheherazade, from A Thousand and One Nights, along with Western classics-Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, Daisy Miller, The Dean's December and, yes, Lolita. As I write the title of each book, memories whirl in with the wind to disturb the quiet of this fall day in another room in another country.

Here and now in that other world that cropped up so many times in our discussions, I sit and reimagine myself and my students, my girls as I came to call them, reading Lolita in a deceptively sunny room in Tehran. But to steal the words from Humbert, the poet/criminal of Lolita, I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we won't really exist if you don't. Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn't dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us.

If I write about Nabokov today, it is to celebrate our reading of Nabokov in Tehran, against all odds. Of all his novels I choose the one I taught last, and the one that is connected to so many memories. It is of Lolita that I want to write, but right now there is no way I can write about that novel without also writing about Tehran. This, then, is the story of Lolita in Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran and how Tehran helped redefine Nabokov's novel, turning it into this Lolita, our Lolita.

2

And so it happened that one Thursday in early September we gathered in my living room for our first meeting. Here they come, one more time. First I hear the bell, a pause, and the closing of the street door. Then I hear footsteps coming up the winding staircase and past my mother's apartment. As I move towards the front door, I register a piece of sky through the side window. Each girl, as soon as she reaches the door, takes off her robe and scarf, sometimes shaking her head from side to side. She pauses before entering the room. Only there is no room, just the teasing void of memory.

More than any other place in our home, the living room was symbolic of my nomadic and borrowed life. Vagrant pieces of furniture from different times and places were thrown together, partly out of financial necessity, and partly because of my eclectic taste. Oddly, these incongruous ingredients created a symmetry that the other, more deliberately furnished rooms in the apartment lacked.

My mother would go crazy each time she saw the paintings leaning against the wall and the vases of flowers on the floor and the curtainless windows, which I refused to dress until I was finally reminded that this was an Islamic country and windows needed to be dressed. I don't know if you really belong to me, she would lament. Didn't I raise you to be orderly and organized? Her tone was serious, but she had repeated the same complaint for so many years that by now it was an almost tender ritual. Azi-that was my nickname-Azi, she would say, you are a grown-up lady now; act like one. Yet there was something in her tone that kept me young and fragile and obstinate, and still, when in memory I hear her voice, I know I never lived up to her expectations. I never did become the lady she tried to will me into being.

That room, which I never paid much attention to at that time, has gained a different status in my mind's eye now that it has become the precious object of memory. It was a spacious room, sparsely furnished and decorated. At one corner was the fireplace, a fanciful creation of my husband, Bijan. There was a love seat against one wall, over which I had thrown a lace cover, my mother's gift from long ago. A pale peach couch faced the window, accompanied by two matching chairs and a big square glass-topped iron table.

My place was always in the chair with its back to the window, which opened onto a wide cul-de-sac called Azar. Opposite the window was the former American Hospital, once small and exclusive, now a noisy, overcrowded medical facility for wounded and disabled veterans of the war. On "weekends"-Thursdays and Fridays in Iran-

the small street was crowded with hospital visitors who came as if for a picnic, with sandwiches and children. The neighbor's front yard, his pride and joy, was the main victim of their assaults, especially in summer, when they helped themselves to his beloved roses. We could hear the sound of children shouting, crying and laughing, and, mingled in, their mothers' voices, also shouting, calling out their children's names and threatening them with punishments. Sometimes a child or two would ring our doorbell and run away, repeating their perilous exercise at intervals.

From our second-story apartment-my mother occupied the first floor, and my brother's apartment, on the third floor, was often empty, since he had left for England-we could see the upper branches of a generous tree and, in the distance, over the buildings, the Elburz Mountains. The street, the hospital and its visitors were censored out of sight. We felt their presence only through the disembodied noises emanating from below.

I could not see my favorite mountains from where I sat, but opposite my chair, on the far wall of the dining room, was an antique oval mirror, a gift from my father, and in its reflection, I could see the mountains capped with snow, even in summer, and watch the trees change color. That censored view intensified my impression that the noise came not from the street below but from some far-off place, a place whose persistent hum was our only link to the world we refused, for those few hours, to acknowledge.

That room, for all of us, became a place of transgression. What a wonderland it was! Sitting around the large coffee table covered with bouquets of flowers, we moved in and out of the novels we read. Looking back, I am amazed at how much we learned without even noticing it. We were, to borrow from Nabokov, to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0812979303
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reissue edition (November 4, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780812979305
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812979305
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 1 x 8.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #145,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #212 in Censorship & Politics
- #1,594 in Women's Biographies
- #4,465 in Memoirs (Books)

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Azar Nafisi

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Azar Nafisi is the author of the multi-award-winning New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, as well as Things I’ve Been Silent About, The Republic of Imagination, and That Other World. Her forthcoming book Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times will be published in March 2022. Formerly the director of The Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations at Johns Hopkins University’s Foreign Policy Institute, she served as a Centennial Fellow at Georgetown University and has taught at Oxford and several universities in Tehran. She lives in Washington, D.C.

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theresa dowd

I am very happy that I chose to read this book

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2016

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I chose to read Reading Lolita in Tehran because I am currently in the middle of reading Lolita. I am very happy that I chose to read this book, it is beautifully written and powerful. This book details the authors, Azar Nafisi’s experiences in Iran after the revolution and her move to America. The book focuses on a class she teaches in her home, during the class they read forbidden western classic books including Lolita. This class gave Azar and her students a chance to take a break from he restrictions of the Islamic State, and gives them the freedom to express their individuality and opinions. I would highly recommend this book, especially to those who value individuality, individual freedom, women's empowerment, and those who appreciate he power of fiction. Personally, I plan on rereading this book in the summer after I finish reading Lolita, so that I can better appreciate Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Azar Nafisi's writing style lacked a lot of dialog, but made up for it with lots of descriptive language and powerful comparisons. The dialog that was included was appropriately placed within the memoir. Azar Nafisi is a talented story teller and while you read her book you can really envision the situations she was in and experience her feelings. A powerful composition made to compare Azars students to classic Greek characters is “Their mistakes, like the tragic flaw in a classic traded, become essential to their development and maturity.” (Nafisi 223). She uses Greek characters hamartia’s to relate to her young students. The student’s choices and mistakes help them become who they are by the end of their final class. Another great comparison was used to compare the students to some of Jane Austen's characters, “Austen’s protagonists are private individuals set in public places. Their desire for privacy and reflection is continually being adjusted to their situation within a very small community which keeps them under its constant scrutiny. The balance between the public and private is essential to this world.” (Nafisi 267). This comparison was used to show how important he class was for students to have their own private space to be themselves without strict laws getting in the way. The examples Azar uses are good for keeping the reader engaged and help them develop a clear image of Azar’s students. The most appropriate audience for this book is someone who doesn't expect a lot of intense action or dialog, but can appreciate hearing personal complex thoughts and feelings.

Even though I've never been in any situations similar to Azar Nafisi I was able to feel for her and think of points in my life that I felt similar emotions to hers. For example, I can relate to her students and herself feeling trapped without a private life. Being in high school while being controlled by adults can feel like I have no private life, but this is so different and less intense compared to Azar Nafisi’s experiences, regardless she makes it easy to relate to her emotions while reading the book. Azar did an incredible job of describing her students on a very personal level. She made it easy to understand their internal and external struggles. To a degree you were able to choose who to like and dislike, but most of Nafisi’s descriptions determined who you would trust and distrust. Nafisi’s explanations of characters struggles helped me better understand the characters as a whole, like this explanation of a characters relationship with wearing her scarf and the governments mandated dress code “…the revolution that imposed the scarf on others did not relive Mahshid of her loneliness. Before the revolution, she could in a sense take pride in her isolation. At that time she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her actions became meaningless.” (Nafisi 13).By explaining the shift in the meaning of Mahshid wearing a scarf it allows the reader to better relate to her and have sympathy for her situation.
Azar did not write this book in chronical order. Instead the book jumps around in time from when she worked at a small university, to a large university, to her private class, and to moving to America, all of this is talked about but not in order of when the memories and situations happened. The way she does this doesn’t confuse the reader because she makes it clear what point in time she is describing within each chapter. This book was engaging the whole way through. Azar holds the reader’s attention by emerging them in the lives and emotional struggles of not only her students but her own life as well. Azar writes about many examples of the Islamic state restricting women’s rights and freedoms, she writes about how this effected students and herself. One student, Vida, is written about expressing her anger when she showed her rage regarding the regime’s new laws “‘The law?’ Vida interrupted him. ‘You guys came in and changed the laws. Is it the law? So was wearing the yellow star in Nazi Germany, should all the Jews have worn the star because it was the blasted law?” (Nafisi 134). By sharing Vida’s outrage with the reader they can become invested in Azar’s students’ lives. While reading this book I learned about what life was like for the people, particularly women, in Iran during the time Azar Nafisi lived there. I now have a better understanding of the restrictions the government put in place and the terrible things people unfairly suffered through.
Overall I am very pleased with Reading Lolita in Tehran. I learned about Iran and how their revolution affected the country’s women. I would recommend this book to anyone, primarily to anyone interested in modern history, learning about other cultures, women’s rights, and education.

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mtspace

Tough Walnut to Crack

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2005

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Reading Lolita in Tehran is structured around the life of the author, an English Literature professor born in Iran, educated in the west and teaching in post-revolutionary Iran. She stands like a maypole at the center of a dance. Dancing around her are the women of her reading group. Further off there are male students, friends and acquaintances, and finally shadowy government functionaries. But these men are not dancers. Some are observers, others play the tune.The strands being woven are thematic ones. As a first guess: Lolita is about the abuse of power. Gatsby, the empty dream. Daisy Miller is about courage and heart. And Pride and Prejudice about using good judgement in social contexts rather than relying on bad rules of engagement. There is no narrative thread, just a group of dancers that weaves back and forth through time.

It is tempting, as a westerner, to read this as a polemic against an 'evil regime' But to do so risks making the same mistake as the revolutionaries. Nafisi, I think, is less interested in the politics per se than in how our lives shape and are shaped by politics. The answers are not easy. Some time after a battle waged by the police against a neighbor that took place from her own bedroom balcony, she writes on the blackboard "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home," quoting Theodore Adorno. Self satisfaction may not be the greatest moral evil, but it is the progenator of them all. We see this again and again in the acts the regime takes against its citizens. They are all motivated by a mindless and smug notion of self-righeousness.

The characters go about their lives, reading James, Austin, Nabokov, and others. They eat cream puffs, drink coffee, defy the regime in their own secret ways, And they have relationships with men. We learn that the revolution seems to have robbed important interpersonal function from its women; by so scrupulously protecting them from the gazes of men it has relegated women to the status of sexual objects. Women retaliate by viewing men the same way. Intimate non-sexual relationships with any member of the opposite sex become impossible. The author highlights this problem in two ways. Firstly, it seems that more of the conversation of this reading circle is about sex than it is about literature. Secondly, by repeatedly seeking advice from a man she calls the magician, she demostrates an ability that seems completely absent from her students.

I found the structure of the narrative extremely confusing. I could not keep the characters straight, and I felt the book jumped around in time so much that I frequently gave up trying to figure out the temporal context. If this had not been the first portal through which I was able to glimpse the Iranian Revolution, I may not have had the patience to get through it. I found the literary criticism interesting and insightful. It made me want to read or re-read the pieces of literature cited. The discussion of literature struck me as being a little loosely tied to the narrative. I'm sure that much of this would get pulled together if the book were the subject of a thesis, but I'd rather not work quite that hard; nor, I expect will most readers. Nevertheless, the fact that a book about reading, ideas, literature, and politics requires some reflection in order to be impactful should not be considered a great negative.

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Monica C Pinheiro

Empolgante e estranhamente atual

Reviewed in Brazil on April 24, 2022

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Esta é a segunda vez que leio este livro excelente e perturbador, da escritora iraniana e professora de Literatura ocidental Azar Nafisi. Minha primeira leitura foi há dezoito anos, pouco depois da sua primeira publicação nos Estados Unidos, onde eu morava na época. O sucesso foi imediato e tive a sorte de assistir a uma palestra dela em Nova York, que muito me marcou.

Além de muito bem escrito, o livro me cativou por conseguir expressar como poucos a revolta e as dificuldades das mulheres iranianas na luta contra a sua colossal perda de direitos após a instauração da República Islâmica do Irã após a queda da monarquia. O que mais me impressionou foi perceber que esta completa reversão histórica, que tão poucos iranianos e observadores internacionais acreditavam ser possível, de repente se impôs na vida de todos os cidadãos com imensa força política, através da ideologia religiosa e manipulação das massas polarizadas. Não há país livre destes perigos, que ameaçam a vida não somente das mulheres, mas de toda a sociedade.
Leitura altamente recomendada tanto para homens como mulheres, para aqueles leitores que ainda se lembram da época do Xá da Pérsia, no século passado, bem como para aqueles que já nasceram nestes “novos tempos” do século 21, em que todas as iranianas são obrigadas a sair às ruas envoltas em seus chadors.

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Robert Agouri

Wonderful

Reviewed in Canada on March 5, 2017

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I must admit I found it a little difficult to get into this book for the first 50 pages but once the author began to describe life in Iran, I found it fascinating & could not put it down.

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José Manuel

A lire

Reviewed in France on March 29, 2017

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Le combat d'un être appartenant à la force de la Nature. La femme et sa détermination... et sa force de caractère, la vaie force, pas celle de la violence qui oblige à la soumission...
Le livre est arrivé dans le temps attendu.L'emballage était parfait, soigné,
Le contenu correspond à mes attentes.
Je remercie le vendeur pour son professionalisme et Amazon de mettre cette plateforme à la disposition du public et des vendeurs

Bonne journée

José Manuel

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Fatemeh

Reviewed in Mexico on November 12, 2015

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Much of the what takes place in the book DID happen in Iran during the period after the war in Iran. However I urge the non-Iranian readers to consult other historical sourses on Iran before and after reading this book since it CAN NOT be taken as a gate to Figuring out Iran, its people and customs. Enjoyed reading it as an Iranian youny woman who spent over 20 years of her life in Iran (28 now) and learned much about the circumstances back then when i wasnt even born. However, life is very different now in Iran and this book is not giving a correct image of the iran women. Plus, the writer seems to be taking sides with the Western liberating ideology!

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alejandro

Mujeres valientes burlándose de la perversión de los ayatollahs

Reviewed in Spain on July 31, 2016

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Describe la lucha dia a dia de unas mujeres iraníes contra la brutal opresión religiosa. Escrito con mucha y muy buena ironía que destroza la falsa moral de los ayatollahs y los pone en su sitio: unos pervertidos con poder. No tiene desperdicio el comentario sobre el ayatollah Jomeini y sus instrucciones de sexualidad con pollos!!

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