Reading Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books tells the story of a country in oppressive turmoil.  The author, through the lives of her literary student club, her own escapades, and the study of western literature, examines life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. Nafisi, formerly a professor of Western literature in Tehran, writes about how she and her students study, and endure, the painfully restrictive climate in the Islamic Republic of Iran. They hold the nature of the fundamental ruling political force, morality raids, blind censorship, and laws under the microscope of literature.

Each chapter in the book is named after classic literature or authors. In “Lolita,” the crushing totalitarian list of rules Nafisi and her students put up with on a daily basis is examined.  Through the scrutiny of Lolita, and other Vladimir Nabokov works, such as Invitation to a Beheading, Nafisi is able to show her students how the protagonists of Nabokov’s stories survive. Their lives, like her students', are ravaged by brutality.  She explains how they, like Nabokov's heroes, can maintain a sense of sanity by being immersed in another dimension, “…only attainable through fiction.”

Reading Lolita in Tehran gives readers a chance to experience the horrible reality of unbridled fundamentalism.  While Nafisi’s experience occurs in Iran, she reaches out to her readers, hoping they will understand that crushing censorship and unreasonable restrictions can occur anywhere.  She explores literature with both her students and readers, to illustrate her point and give relief to the weary.

Highly visual and always right on, Reading Lolita in Tehran is an example of why the arts and literature are the lifeblood of society.  A must read for people who are concerned about the direction our political system is moving in.  It outlines why our individual freedoms, especially the freedom of speech, must be maintained at all cost.