Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, memoir by Iranian-American writer Azar Nafisi. Published in 2003, it is an account of her life teaching literature in Iran between 1979 and 1997.
Born in Tehrān and educated in England, Switzerland, and the United States, Nafisi returned to Iran, where she was a professor of English literature at the University of Tehran from 1979 until 1981, when her refusal to cover her hair with a veil, as required by the government, led to her dismissal. She later taught at Allameh Tabatabaʾi University but found it increasingly oppressive and left the position in 1995, after which she met in her home with several of her female students to discuss works of Western literature. Nafisi left Iran and moved to the U.S. in 1997, where she became a citizen in 2008.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is divided into four sections, the first two named for works of literature and the other two for Western authors. The first section, “Lolita,” begins as Nafisi looks at two photographs of her students taken in 1997, one in which they are veiled in accordance with the rules of the regime and one in which they reveal their true appearance. It describes the beginning of the clandestine literature seminar that Nafisi conducted in her home each week, attended by seven of her best and brightest female students. They discuss several works by Vladimir Nabokov as well as their private lives and the circumstances in which they are living.
In the second section, “Gatsby,” Nafisi describes her earlier life, including her education, her first and second marriages, and her time, starting during the Iranian Revolution, of teaching at the University of Tehran. In this section, after objections are lodged against her teaching The Great Gatsby because it is an American book and offensive to Islam, Nafisi stages a trial of the book with students as judge, jury, and prosecution and defense lawyers. This section ends when Nafisi and other professors are expelled from the university.
The third section, “James,” begins with the start of the Iran-Iraq War and covers the period when Nafisi was no longer teaching. During this time she has two children and joins a book group on classical Persian literature. Later she is asked to return to the classroom, and she agrees to wear the veil to instruct at Allameh Tabatabaʾi University as long as she may teach subjects of her own choosing. She teaches various works by Henry James. Her personal life and the realities of life during the war are also discussed. The final section, “Austen,” returns to the private seminar that Nafisi secretly conducts and leads up to her decision to emigrate.
Through their discussions of classic Western novels (all of which had to be photocopied because the books were outlawed), the young women learn about each other and themselves, and most importantly, how to exercise some degree of freedom in a totalitarian state. In addition, Nafisi weaves her own life story around the history of Iran during the tumultuous period of the revolution, the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the war with Iraq. Nafisi also reveals how parallels to the lives they are living can be found in the books that they are studying.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is an original, intelligent, and eye-opening book. Not only does it show how, as Nafisi says, “a great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals,” it paints a vivid and often disturbing portrait of women’s lives under the repressive regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
