Azar Nafisi

Late to the party on this one, but happy to have finally gotten to it. Combination memoir and literary criticism, Nafisi uses her college teaching career and a clandestine class she taught for young women on literature as the structure for a meditation on the volatile times she lived through in Iran. Her main topics for novels include those of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen. I'm perplexed by the reviews below here complaining about not enjoying Nafisi's book because they hadn't read show more any books by the four featured authors. Nafisi's book is blurbed and described everywhere as a rumination on those authors - why pick up this book if you don't have any interest in those authors? Even I, an avowed James avoider, had my curiosity piqued by Nafisi's discussions of his work. And she had wonderfully unique insights on the others.

The bonus here is the history and cultural primer on Iran in the 1970s and 1980s. Though sometimes confusing, it's nice to have a broader understanding of the diverse and complicated state of affairs that only featured as sound bytes on the nightly news - the primary source of information in those days. And it was so much more complicated than I ever considered. I've been looking for a good book on the Middle East, and this one served as a wonderful introduction. My only criticism is that Nafisi's prose can sometimes be a little dense - I'd hate to have been required to keep up with her in class.

4 bones!!!!
Recommended show less

The story of Iranian women's experiences under a totalitarian regime, told in a straightforward manner but supplemented by metaphors drawn from the Western literary canon. The author Azar Nafisi is well capable of this approach, given her Western education and background as a professor of English literature at Tehran University. Her story begins with an illicit reading group comprised of former students who met in her home in the mid-1990s, but soon moves back in time to cover her life in show more Iran from 1979 onward, relating the gradual tightening of controls over the country's population under Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors. The timeline becomes muddied in places, but for the most part it is chronological.

Through its clear prose and inviting method, this work has completely changed my image of Iran, its history and its people. I've long imagined Iran's people as hardline, but here the author describes 'Death to America' chants staged for western cameras by Iranian citizens forced or paid to participate. The Iranian Revolution was not an overnight success, resorting to force and murder in overcoming numerous protests and demonstrations by its unbelieving citizens, who even then did not foresee all that was coming: "To think that the universities could be closed down seemed as far-fetched as the possibility that women would finally succumb to wearing the veil."

I derived the most benefit from the portions offering critical study of various classic novels. Magic happens when Western literature is interpreted through the eyes of these Iranian women, providing great insight into their society through the parallels drawn. Humbert Humbert's oppression of Lolita is likened to the totalitarian regime they suffer under; moral stances in The Great Gatsby are equated with the revolutionaries; the women of Henry James' novels serve as models for quiet defiance, etc. I'd strongly recommend having read the titles most closely studied in advance (or else you won't need to): Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and Pride & Prejudice. show less

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, show more 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. show less

I was a bit wary of this book-- how difficult can it be to generate a bestseller in the US from a critique of the poster-child of totalitarian revolutions, Iran? What kept me interested was the irony of the novel becoming so passionately important as an ethical tool in a repressive society, while in our own "open" society it is basically just more merchandise. The trial of Gatsby had me spellbound. As did, I have to say, the little details of life in a misogynarchy -- I always thought show more Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was kind of too incredible to be compelling, but here is its real life counterpart. show less