Reading Lolita in Tehran
By: Azar Nafisi
Overview:
This book is about the true events of Azar, a woman who lives in Tehran Before, during, and after the revolution. As a professor of literature at a university, she resigns in 1995 due to the and selects her most loyal, committed students from her classes to join her in secret for a book club in her apartment. While all the girls in the group are Iranian, they all come from different backgrounds with different views in the world. After getting their first book, A Thousand and One Nights, they start keeping journals to communicate their thoughts and personal feelings. Living in the controlling Islamic regime, this creates a space of free speech where they can secretly begin to live their lives freely through these journals and meetings. In their reality, they are patrolled by armed soldiers when they don't cover their hair in their mandatory shawls, wear makeup, and even when they don't stick to the women's section on public transportation. They eventually get around to reading Lolita,even though it is banned by the government. The women soon begin to connect with the novel all for different reasons. But soon they begin to fear getting caught more and more, as they read deeper into banned books. They keep the journals and continue to write. In the end the reader sees how literature sometime reflects on reality, and in many cases these women it reflects their daily lives in Tehran. |