Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Azar Nafisi

Random House Publishing Group, Dec 30, 2003 - Biography & Autobiography - 384 pages

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

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - CarrieWuj - LibraryThing

Speaks to the freedoms we take for granted and that take immense courage in other parts of the world. A memoir of a study group of women in Islamic Iran reading Western classics, the book delves into their lives as they are highlighted by the fiction they are reading.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - KayIS813 - LibraryThing

I liked this more than I thought I would. There are major spoilers for some popular classics though! Most notably the Great Gatsby. I haven't read the book but I saw a play for it the Saturday before ...

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 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 radio and television programs. Azar's book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was published in 2003 to wide acclaim.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books; Volume 13 of Stranger than -
• Author: Azar Nafisi
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2003
• ISBN: 1588360792, 9781588360793
• Length: 384 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / Women; Social Science / Women's Studies