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 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 ( )

Ostensibly, this book is about a secret class that takes place in Iran during the revolution. In reality, it is the memoir of an Iranian English professor in which she relates her experiences during this time frame - - which include teaching at the university, refusing to wear the veil, leaving the university, and ultimately emigrating to the U.S.

Interwoven with experiences that take place in Iran are Nafisi's literary critiques and interpretations - - as she shared them with her students. The reason I picked this book up, at this time, is that Nafisi is coming to speak here in Baltimore, and I have tickets to see her. After reading her book, well, I'm a little concerned.

In my mind, the book merits the three stars that I'm giving it for Nafisi's literary expertise and the way she compares the roles in fiction to the situation in Iran. I have read the main works she refers to - - Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Washington Square (although not Daisy Miller) - - and she made me want to re-read them all as I think I would see them with fresh eyes.

That being said, I almost wish she had simply written an academic work, and that I had read THAT.

To me, Nafisi is all over the place with this memoir. She organizes the book by literary author - - and therefore, the book is not a sequential tale. For me, this made the book much harder to follow than it needed to be - - and to no benefit. Some books aren't linear, and there's an important rationale behind it. This book wasn't linear, and given that it is by its very nature historical - - I just found myself wondering where in time I was.

I also found it to be pretty emotionless and quite pretentious. I don't really experience the fears and the emotions that the women in Iran are going through. I read them. Intellectually, I see the horror of it all. But I remain emotionless throughout the reading. I definitely can't relate well to Nafisi who shares very little of her own personal situation and focuses almost exclusively on her students and how she teaches them.

All in all, I do think this book had a great premise, and there are five star moments, but in the end, I don't think the book lived up to either the premise or the hype.

p.s. If you haven't read the main texts that are addressed in this book, I really think it will be even less engaging for you. ( )

2.5 stars. I think my appreciation of this book would have been enhanced by being more familiar with the novels she discusses and references. I was hoping to connect with this memoir more than I did. It was worth reading - I learned some things about Iran and women's rights there. ( )

Couldn't bring myself to read it. A rare event. ( )

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 its 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 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." In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen, Amazon.com