Book 44: Reading Lolita in Tehran

TITLE: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
AUTHOR: Azar Nafisi
STARTED: August 30, 2008
FINISHED: September 7, 2008
PAGES: 356
GENRE: Memoir

FIRST SENTENCE: In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academicpost, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream.

SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] 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, 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.

THOUGHTS: I’m still stewing over my opinion on this book. It was good and I was still disappointed. Reading Lolita in Tehran has been in my TBR mountain for eons so when it was picked for my book club (my month, who woulda guessed) I was quite happy to finally get around to reading it. Somehow, Nafisi’s book did not meet my expectations, I was expecting more intertwining of the books Nafisi discusses and her life in Tehran. The book was still enjoyable, but not in the way I had figured it would be.

I've heard this book is more enjoyable after one has read all the books mentioned in the text. It's true. While I won’t be going back and reading the entire bibliography listed in this memoir, I can say that, had I read all of these books, my perception of Reading Lolita in Tehran would have been much different. This memoir ended up being not so much about Nafisi’s life in books, but more how these books helped her understand what she was living through during the Islamic Revolution.

It could be the book or it could have been me, but I could not fall into Reading Lolita in Tehran. For some reason, it never grabbed me. It was very easy for me to step out of Nafisi’s narrative. I developed no emotional connection with the author or her story.

RATING: 5/10 [Meh.]