Definitely worth reading. It wasn't a quick read - it took me longer than most books of this length would - but I enjoyed it. It's a memoir by an Iranian professor of Western literature. Through her experiences as a woman in revolutionary Iran, her relationships with her students and mentor, and the connections between fiction and reality, she tries to make sense of her memories. I probably would have enjoyed the book more if I had read all of the books the author discusses (particularly Henry James, who I don't love), but I was familiar enough with the authors and the main books (Lolita, The Great Gatsby, several by Jane Austen) that it wasn't problematic. I'd recommend this one to anyone with an interest in both literature and recent history in the Middle East. ( )

This book is an account of living under Ayatollah Khomeini's regime under sharia law, told partly through discussions of literature.

To read this book was, for me, slightly disorientating: for I felt like I was reading dystopian fiction, having a window into these women's lives under the regime. Yet it is autobiographical.

I guess what hits hardest about the novel was that prior to Khomeini's accession, women were on a similarly liberated footing in Iran as in the West:

"At the start of the 20th Century, the age of marriage in Iran - 9, according to sharia laws - was changed to 13 and then later to 18. My mother had chosen whom she wanted to marry and she had been one of the first six women elected to Parliament in 1963. When I was growing up, in the 1960s, there was little difference between my rights and the rights of women in Western democracies. But it was not the fashion then to think that our culture was not compatible with modern democracy, that there were Western and Islamic versions of democracy and human rights. We all wanted opportunities and freedom. That is why we supported revolutionary change - we were demanding more rights, not fewer.

I married on the eve of revolution, a man I loved. [...] By the time my daughter was born five years later, the laws had regressed to what they had been before my grandmother's time: the first law to be repealed, months before the ratification of a new constitution, was the family-protection law, which guaranteed women's rights at home and at work. [...] My youthful years had witnessed the rise of two women to the rank of cabinet minister. After the revolution, these same two women were sentenced to death for the sins of warring with God and spreading prostitution. One of them [...] had been abroad at the time of the revolution and remained in exile. [...] The other, the minister of education and my former high school principal, was put in a sack and stoned or shot to death." (Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi, p.261-262)

With its atmosphere of surveillance, propaganda and morality squads, it felt like I was reading something along the lines of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, because it seems so alien. As you can probably tell, I didn't know much about Iran, (and indeed, still know passing little), but have been inspired to find out more.

I liked the way that books are reference points, memoirs, to the book. Nafisi taught literature and her enthusiasm for the texts translates well, (to the point I have a new list of books I wish to read or re-read) while also throwing the repressiveness of the regime into sharp relief. ( )

Azar Nafisi, now living in the United States, is a professor, a journalist, and an author who writes of her experiences in teaching English Literature in Tehran, Iran. The book is broken down into four segments of different time periods ranging from 1979 to 1997. With each period of time Azar correlates the occurrences of her life in Iran with the works of different authors.

The book begins in 1995, when Azar is no longer employed by the University of Tehran, but is teaching a private class at her home. She gathers seven highly intelligent women for a weekly meeting that resembles a book club. The first book they must read is Lolita. Azar is quoted as saying her objective was “choosing a work of fiction that would most resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Iran every woman is a Lolita; marriage is allowed at the age of 9”. So Azar makes Xerox copies of her censored book and the class begins. As the seven young women share their thoughts, their experiences, their pain and their joys with Azar and the rest of the class, we learn many facts about every day life in Iran.

Streets of Tehran are patrolled by armed militia in white Toyotas, called “The Blood of God”, or “Morality Squads”. Their sole function is making sure women are veiled, and covered properly when in public. Women may not wear make-up, show any hair, or let their finger nails grow “too long”. These “crimes” result in arrests, floggings, and jail sentences. But it is not just women who suffer. Iran is intent on purging the country of “decadent western culture”. The entire country is deprived; no alcohol, no satellite dishes, no modern music, no touching someone of the opposite sex, in fact men are strongly discouraged from even looking at a woman’s face when out if public.

The second segment of the book drops back in time to 1979. Azar was teaching at the University of Tehran and the class is reading The Great Gatsby. Azar dissects every little nuance of Gatsby and then proceeds to compare it’s substance with what the people in Iran are experiencing, in an intellectual, abstract sort of way. In the meantime, Iran is in the midst of a revolutionary takeover. There are demonstrations, sit-ins, violence, arrests, and executions. This should have been one of the most interesting segments of the book, but I had a hard time staying interested. I just didn’t get the connection between Gatsby and Iran. And I felt Azar literally had her nose buried in a book, and everything that happened merely resulted in her giving a more intensified literary evaluation/comparison to The Great Gatsby.

The third and fourth segments revolve around the continued chaos that the revolution brings, and the Iran/Iraq war. Many facts about every day life in Tehran, and the lives of the women in the “book club”, paralleled with the literary works of Henry James and Jane Austin. Discussions about social decorum, personal power struggles, relationships, love, happiness, integrity, and freedom. It was fascinating to read about life in Iran, unfortunately the history and culture of Iran were overshadowed by Azar’s ongoing literary lecture. I would only recommend this book to someone who is an avid reader of the authors mentioned in the book. ( )

Fascinating ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1213868...

This is a brilliant book about literature in a society which is closing itself up. There are four sections (the first two names after books, Lolita and Gatsby; the others after authors, James and Austen) but the key is the first section, where Nafisi, fired from her university teaching post for not conforming to the strict dress code, sets up a reading group for seven women to read, among other works, Lolita. There is of course a gross parallel, in that the damage Humbert inflicts on Lolita is analogous (in some cases, identical) to that inflicted by the Iranian authorities on their own people, especially women. But the wider point Nafisi makes is to describe the response of her students to great literature and to make the case that it is an essential part of the human condition - and to deny it is inhuman.

The Gatsby section goes back to the early days of the revolution, and chronicles the heady times of ideals and the gradual encroachment of the values of the Islamic Republic, culminating in a rather funny court scene where The Great Gatsby itself is put on trial. Nafisi is pretty merciless in mocking the intellectual contributions of the most doctrinaire of the students, and I suspect that they are an easy target.

The second half of the book chronicles her gradual disengagement from Iran and eventual emigration. It's still very good but the first half is the essential part of the argument, the bit that Marjane Satrapi doesn't have as much of.

Wikipedia has an account of the criticism levelled at the book and the author from various quarters. A lot of it simply isn't fair: Nafisi is a specialist in English-language literature, so it's hardly surprising that she chose that as the subject of her classes. It is true that of course this may play to the prejudices of the monoglot Anglophone philistine, but this is clearly not Nafisi's purpose. Another rather peculiar criticism is that the book describes Iran at its darkest, between 1979 and 1996, and things are better now. This is unfair because Nafisi is diligent at specifying dates, to moor the narrative to a particular set of points in the past rather than the present, and at portraying a society as it changes for the worse, but at the same time showing hope that it may change for the better. (And anyway, while things may have improved slightly under the later presidencies of Khatami and Ahmedinejad, I don't get the impression that the improvement is much to write books about.)

Part of this, of course, is a reflection in Wikipedia of the peculiar toxicity attached to Iran in American public discourse. I was utterly astonished the other day to catch a CNN commentator describe President Ahmadinejad as the most evil person in the world (I do not paraphrase). There are a lot of other candidates; most of them are of course on better terms with the US government. The concentration on Ahmadinejad as hate figure (consider also the extraordinarily inhospitable remarks made by the President of Columbia University when introducing him back in September 2007) also displays an unwillingness to get to grips with the roles of the Supreme Leader and Council of Guardians. It is a shame if Nafisi's book helps perpetuate those prejudices, though I can't believe that a thoughtful reader would take that message from it. ( )