Baker & Taylor Describes growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the group of young women who came together at her home in secret every Thursday to read and discuss great books of Western literature, explaining the influence of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and other works on their lives and goals. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
Baker & Taylor The author describes growing up in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the group of young women who came together at her home in secret every Thursday to read and discuss great books of Western literature.
Random House, Inc. #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠We all have dreamsâthings we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisiâs 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 readingâPride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolitaâtheir Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.
Nafisiâs 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 Nafisiâs class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of âthe Great Satan,â she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.
Azar Nafisiâs luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of womenâs 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
âAnyone 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 donâ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.ââGeraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire