Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
AZAR NAFISI
2003

INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
PLOT SUMMARY
CHARACTERS
THEMES
STYLE
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
CRITICAL OVERVIEW
CRITICISM
SOURCES
FURTHER READING

INTRODUCTION

Azar Nafisi's memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003), describes her experiences living in Iran from 1979 to 1997. The country had just undergone a revolution when she returned in the late 1970s from schooling abroad, and an oppressive theocracy took the place of a western-influenced monarchy. Nafisi, a native of Iran who had received much of her education in Europe and the United States, found nearly every aspect of her life was constrained by the social, cultural, and political conditions under which she lived. Though she was demoralized by her increasingly diminished status as a woman and by the restrictions placed on her as a university professor, Nafisi never lost her love and appreciation of literature.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi intertwines her group-based discussions and own interpretations of novels such as Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Henry James's Daisy Miller, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with her impressions, memories, and stories of the Iran in which she and her students, friends, and family lived. Nafisi emphasizes the way literature relates to daily life in Iran and the indignities its citizens, especially women and academics, face. She hasadmitted that one reason she wrote the book was to help release the anger she still felt over those situations.

Reading Lolita in Tehran made the New York Times bestseller list for at least twenty-eight weeks, won the 2003 Frederic W. Ness Book Award, and was eventually translated into no less than ten languages. The book was brought in from other countries and read in Iran, despite being officially banned there. It generally received positive reviews, with many critics commending its complexities and depiction of life in Iran. Also, as Edward Luce wrote in the Financial Times (U.K.), "At its heart, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a passionate defence of the universal relevance of literature."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Azar Nafisi was born around 1950 in Tehran, Iran, into an intellectual, influential Iranian family. She is the daughter of Ahmad and Nezhat Nafisi. Her father once served as the mayor of Tehran, while her mother was one of the first female members of the Iranian Parliament in the early 1960s. When Nafisi was thirteen years old, she was sent abroad to complete her education. She went to schools in England and Switzerland before returning to Iran upon the arrest of her father when she was a high school student.

When Nafisi was eighteen years old, she married her first husband and went with him to the United States, where he was completing his university education. The couple settled in Oklahoma, and she ended the marriage four years after it began. Nafisi remained at the University of Oklahoma to finish her own education there. As a university student, she became involved in supporting a revolution in Iran, hoping that human rights would increase with a regime change. Through such activities, Nafisi met her second husband, a civil engineer named Bijan Naderi. The couple married in 1977, while still living in the United States.

Nafisi and her husband returned to Tehran in 1979, after she earned her Ph.D. in English and American literature at the University of Oklahoma. She found Iran far different than it was when she was a child. An oppressive theocracy was taking hold, and Nafisi had to cope with increasingly oppressive conditions in her country.

In Iran, Nafisi began her professional career teaching literature at several universities. She began at the University of Tehran in 1979, but she was fired in 1981 for refusing to wear a veil while teaching. Nafisi was hired at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran in the late 1980s. During her time there, Nafisi published her first book, Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov's Novels (1994). She resigned from Allameh Tabatabai in 1995 and soon began the weekly home-based classes discussed in her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003).

Nafisi and her husband left Iran in 1997 and returned to the United States. There, she resumed her teaching career at Johns Hopkins University in the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies. After securing a book deal, Nafisi began writing what would become Reading Lolita in 1999. The success of the memoir led to many public appearances for Nafisi as she became a popular speaker. She also began contributing to newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times and the New Republic, as well as appearing on radio and television programs. In addition, Nafisi organized and served as the first director of the Dialogue Project at Johns Hopkins, a forum to promote democracy and human rights in Muslim countries, as well as understanding between Muslims and Westerners. As of 2006, she is a Foreign Policy Institute Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her family.

PLOT SUMMARY

Part I: Lolita

In the opening pages of Reading Lolita in Tehran, author Azar Nafisi describes her home-based literature class, which she began holding after resigning in 1995 from her last academic post under the Islamic Republic of Iran. From among her university students, she chooses the seven women in the class whom she considers the best, brightest, and most committed to learning. The author believes the book that best echoes what life is like in Iran is Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Nafisi describes each of her students, who come from different social and political backgrounds and have a variety of interests. The author notes that as the women shed their scarves and robes when they enter her home for the class, they gain self-definition. This sense of self grows as they explore the relationship between fiction and reality.

Nafisi feels the class also allows her a measure of freedom to be herself and to be the teacher she had wanted to be in Iran. Teaching at universities in Iran had been stressful. She was regulated in what she had to wear and how she could act, just as her female students were. Nafisi had begun her teaching career at the University of Allameh Tabatabai in 1987. She had tried to resign in 1993, but it took two years before her resignation was accepted.

Beginning their discussion with A Thousand and One Nights, Nafisi asks her home-based class, among other things, to consider "how these great works of imagination could help us in our present trapped situation as women." During the discussion, a student named Yassi delights in the word upsilamba, which takes Nafisi back to a class she taught in 1994. The class's favorite book was Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, in which Nabakov invented the word. Nafisi relates Nabakov's depiction of "the nightmarish quality of living in an atmosphere of perpetual dread" to living in Iran's totalitarian society at the time. She describes how the Iranian government censored films, television, and books, only allowing those that reflected their ideology.

Nafisi's home-based class allows her and her students to escape the absurdities of everyday life for a few hours. After relating several stories of how women are humiliated in Iran, Nafisi draws a parallel between the world of fictional shadows in many of Nabokov's novels and the world she is creating with her students.

Moving back to her literature class and Lolita, Nafisi emphasizes that the book is not a criticism of Islamic Iran, but that, like Lolita, Iranian women lack a past and only exist in terms of others. Nafisi argues that Lolita's Humbert is a cruel and cunning villain who blames his helpless, dependent child-victim, Lolita, for his criminal actions towards her.

Nafisi reveals that she cannot sleep many nights because of fear for her friends and family living in Iran. These feelings began when she was a sophomore at a school in Switzerland and she had to return to Tehran during Christmas break because her father, then the city's mayor, had been jailed. Each of her students has had a jail-related dream as well. Nafisi's daytime activities allow her to continue moving forward.

In her class, the women discuss Lolita in terms of immorality and their own lives, experiences, and beliefs. Though there are differences between the students, Nafisi also emphasizes the commonality of their experience in Iran, primarily in terms of what they cannot do and the importance of their Thursday morning class.

Over time, the classes begin stretching past lunchtime. Nafisi's family comes to know all of her students, some of whom become quite close to them. Yassi spends many nights at their home. She is present one memorable day when men from the Revolutionary Committee use the family's balcony to shoot at a wanted man.

One Thursday, the women discuss Sanaz, a classmate who has not shown up for several weeks. Sanaz appears later that day, and tells them that she had been in jail. Sanaz and her friends were arrested by the morality squad on false charges. All were compelled to confess to crimes they did not commit and were given the physical punishment of at least twenty-five lashes. The story distresses Nafisi and sticks with her for many years. She describes her students' self-images as expressed in their journals. The author feels that her past was taken away, while her students lack a past and find solace in often empty rituals.

Part II: Gatsby

Nafisi recounts what happened in her life in the seventeen years since she first left Tehran as a teenaged schoolgirl. She had returned to Iran a year after returning from boarding school in Switzerland, then married a man whom she knew she would soon divorce. The couple moved to Oklahoma, where he attended graduate school. They divorced three years later when her father was released from prison.

While living in Oklahoma, Nafisi becomes involved in the World Confederation of Iranian Students, primarily because of her father's time in prison, her family's nationalist leanings, and her own sense of rebellion. Still, literature is her main interest, even as she attends rallies and other political functions. Such activities introduce her to a charismatic student leader named Bijan Naderi, whom she marries in 1977.

Nafisi takes a job teaching at the University of Tehran's English Department in 1979, and there she focuses on teaching fiction from the twentieth century. The university is the center of political struggle in the new Islamic government, and she attends political demonstrations and meetings often when not teaching or preparing for a class. Devoted to literature, she tries to engage her students by making them think of the literature they read as subversive. She tells them to think about reading books as looking at the world in another way.

One difficulty she faces is classes at the university being regularly boycotted or canceled. Nafisi's classes are well attended and held frequently. Even Mr. Bahri, a politically active student, becomes involved in her class, supporting it and defending it to others. She tries to shake his hand after an intense discussion outside of class, but he withdraws, not wanting to touch a woman outside of his family. She writes, "My experiences, especially my teaching experiences, in Iran have been framed by the feel and touch of that aborted handshake."

Political unrest and uncertainty remain part of life in Iran. Nafisi attends a few meetings, sees the restrictions on life and culture increase, and tries to concentrate on teaching; however, the violence touches her life as people she knows are being persecuted and sometimes executed. Her classes often become forums for discussions of politics and current events.

After the American embassy in Iran is occupied, Nafisi begins to see that the America she knows has become a mythical place to of Iranians: hated, yet "a Paradise Lost." She misses some aspects of the United States, and fears she will never be allowed to leave Iran again. One book she teaches in her class is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. She regards the novel as an excellent work of fiction and an expression of the American Dream, but her students do not always fully comprehend the book or its meaning.

Nafisi once cancels her class to join a protest against increased limitations of women's rights, primarily the rule that women must wear head-scarves. This leads to a debate with some of her students. Mahtab and some of the leftists side with the conservative government; Nafisi understands their point of view as she had been a leftist in Oklahoma.

One day, a student named Mr. Nyazi informs Nafisi that he has lodged a complaint against Gatsby. Nafisi decides to put Gatsby on trial in her classroom, with Mr. Nyazi acting as prosecutor and Nafisi as the defendant, as the novel itself. During the trial, Mr. Nyazi argues that Gatsby is immoral, shows the evil of American society, and should be banned. Zarrin, who leads the defense, believes the point of the book is to condemn the rich. While Nyazi focuses on the adultery therein, Nafisi points out that the novel is about disillusionment and explores how complex situations such adultery really are.

During her last class discussion on Gatsby, Nafisi tells students that idealistic dreams, like Gatsby's dream, have become a harsh reality in Iran. Leaving class, she feels a sense of loss, especially of personal life, in her mother country. The next semester proves more difficult with fewer classes, the government's threats to shut down the universities, and more meetings and demonstrations, some violent.

Though students hold vigils to keep the university open, the government eventually shuts down the universities for a time. Nafisi keeps her job for another year, but does not have anything to do. When Iran becomes the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1981, women are forced to wear headscarves all the time in public, something Nafisi does not want to do. Nafisi is later fired from her post at the university.

Part III: James

Nafisi describes the start of the Iran-Iraq War. The conflict seems to come out of the blue and lasts for nearly eight years. The Islamic regime also continues to wage war against those inside Iran whom they believe are against them. Criticism is not tolerated. Nafisi knows that she will soon be expelled from her position at the University of Tehran as a friend who shares her sentiments, Laleh, is also compelled to leave unless she agrees to new rules. Nafisi meets with the student Mr. Bahri, who tries to convince his professor to wear the veil. She will not, out of respect for those who do so out of genuine religious devoutness. Nafisi will not let outside forces decide who she is and decides not to go to the university again and she is formally expelled.

Soon, the government forces Iranian women to wear scarves with long robes, or chadors (garments that cover both the head and the body). The government also regulates their interactions with the opposite sex. The changes leave Nafisi feeling befuddled: "now that all this was illegal, I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe." Supported by her husband, she begins losing herself in her books. She and Bijan have a daughter in 1984 and a son in 1985.

Nafisi's participation in a literature group leads to her career as a writer. Still unfulfilled, she calls the man she refers to as "my magician" for the first time. He is a former professor who essentially dropped out of everyday society, and the pair establish an intellectual friendship.

Nafisi does not plan to return to the classroom on a full-time basis, though she teaches an occasional university class. A change in the government's attitude by the mid-1980s leads to an increased demand for professors. She is asked by many institutions to return to teaching, but she refuses. Finally, in 1987, a teacher at Allameh Tabatabai University named Mrs. Rezvan implores Nafisi to join the faculty there. Others in Nafisi's circle also believe she should return, though she is still reluctant to teach while veiled. Nafisi agrees to take the job as long as she can teach what and how she wants.

Teaching at the university comes with difficulties for Nafisi. On her first day, she finds a note under her office door that reads, "The adulterous Nafisi should be expelled." The note is a rude reminder of the culture of fear and intimidation in Iran. After telling the university's administration of the incident, she receives no support other than being allowed to teach.

In her class, "Introduction to the Novel II," Nafisi teaches Daisy Miller by Henry James. Nassrin, a student she had known from the University of Tehran, attends this class with Mahshid. During the previous seven years, Nassrin had been arrested and imprisoned, but was allowed to return to school. Mitra is also among the students in this class. After describing her other students, Nafisi focuses on Mr. Ghomi, who is particularly disapproving of James. Like many of her students, Mr. Ghomi is critical of Daisy Miller, a woman who refuses to do what is expected of her. He believes the character is a fundamentally bad person and does not deserve to live. Nafisi notes that James can be confusing and he makes her students uneasy.

Early in 1988, Tehran is subject to intense air attacks again for the first time in a year. Many people leave the city, and a few missiles fall close to Nafisi's home. Her classes also shrink in size, though the students who remain are generally dedicated. Many in Iran grow tired of the long war. Though victories or deaths often result in public ceremonies that disrupt class, if a bombing in a civilian location in Tehran results in death, no one is allowed to help, mourn, or protest. Returning to James, Nafisi notes that he lived through two wars, and his experiences in World War I colored the remainder of his life with sadness, outrage, and purpose.

While still teaching, Nafisi is surprised by the return of another former student, Mahtab, who audits the class. Mahtab had been arrested and served time in jail with another former student named Razieh, who had been executed. Mahtab was released early on good behavior, got married, and became a mother. Nafisi struggles with the realization that her surviving students consider themselves lucky, writing, "my students had developed a strange concept of fortune."

Nafisi remembers that Razieh had enjoyed their discussion of James in a class at Alzahrah University, a women's college in Tehran. Early in her teaching career, Nafisi got angry and ranted in class at her students' inability to express any of their own thoughts in an exam. Razieh had confronted her afterward and defended her classmates, who had never been encouraged to think for themselves. She admonished Nafisi for hurting the girls and not understanding better. Razieh's favorite book was James's Washington Square, in which the heroine, Catherine Sloper, is at once defiant and dignified as she refuses to act against her own sense of right.

After a brief respite from the air attacks, the bombings continue and the universities are closed from March 1988 until the end of the war two months later. Nafisi rekindles her friendship with Mina, a James scholar who now focuses on translating. Soon after a bomb strikes close to Nafisi's home, the war ends with Iran agreeing to a cease-fire with Iraq.

Classes resume amidst a country shattered. More students come, some of whom, like Manna and Nima, merely audit the class. The death of and official mourning for Ayatollah Khomeini, about a year later, again interrupts classes and everyday life. When classes resume, Nafisi and her students are talking about courageous Henry James characters when their discussion is interrupted by a commotion outside. A student active in the Muslim Students' Association has set himself on fire and runs down a hallway expressing his disillusionment with peace after the passion of war.

Part IV: Austen

Nafisi's memoir returns to the class she held in her home. She and her students mix a discussion of Jane Austen with thoughts about their lives, marriage, and love. They are waiting for Sanaz, who arrives late. She is about to become engaged to Ali, her childhood sweetheart, whose parents had sent him to England years earlier to protect him from the revolution. Sanaz plans to meet her future fiancé in Turkey with their families. Talk of weddings and etiquette reminds Nassrin of the "Dear Jane Society," which she and her students had created when Nafisi taught at Allameh. Nafisi had tried to explain Pride and Prejudice by showing them how to dance as the characters in the novel did. Nafisi also recalls that she asked Nassrin and Mahshid to join her Thursday morning home class that day.

With Sanaz away on her trip to Turkey, the other students talk about her engagement. The women share details of their lives: Yassi's beloved uncle is visiting from America; only Mahshid does not want to move abroad; Azin's third husband abuses her, but she fears losing their daughter if she divorces him. Within a few weeks of her return from Turkey, Sanaz's fiancé abruptly calls off their engagement. His family blames his years abroad for his callousness.

Nafisi believes that most of their problems can be traced to one root: "Their dilemmas … stemmed from the confiscation of their most intimate moments and private aspirations by the regime." The reality of life in Iran is far from the words used by those in charge to define it, principally related to their interpretation of Islam. While there is some moderation in the government's hard-line stance, the oppression still continues in the mid-1990s. This control extends to the subjects deemed appropriate for writers, artists, and filmmakers.

Nafisi's "magician" says that Nafisi should not focus all her anger on the government. He cannot see the connection between Sanaz's heartbreak and the Islamic Republic's infiltration of private lives, as Nafisi charges. He encourages her to help her students understand Austen and to create their own spaces rather than worry about the oppressive Iranian government.

Both Yassi and Sanaz are under pressure to marry. Azin tells them not to, but she is still struggling over the question of divorce and whether she should leave Iran. While Mahshid believes they should stay and help improve the country, Nafisi feels a pang of conscience as Bijan wants to stay and resist the government. Nafisi worries about all her students and their futures.

Nassrin comes to Nafisi asking for advice on how to deal with a boyfriend, Ramin, whom she had been seeing for two months. Nassrin is unsure about how to act in this relationship and Nafisi supports her. Nassrin asks if Nafisi will come to a concert put on by Ramin's students. Nafisi convinces her husband and children to go. The show is stilted and difficult to watch, and Nassrin is embarrassed.

During another class session, Nafisi learns that her students differentiate between love on an intellectual or spiritual level as something good, while they consider sex to be bad. She believes they do not really understand love because they have seen no examples that could make them believe it can exist for them. Nafisi decides they must learn about their own bodies, sensuality, and passion. She believes Austen's novels are full of passion and women who sacrifice to make decisions for themselves.

Nafisi continues to find life in Iran difficult for intellectuals. She has cause for concern one day when she meets her "magician" in a coffee shop. Soon after telling him, "Austen's theme is cruelty not under extraordinary circumstances but ordinary ones, committed by people like us," a raid by the Revolutionary Guard takes place. Her friend moves to another table in order to avoid being seen with a woman that he is not related to, and she leaves the establishment alone soon after. She again thinks of leaving Iran.

After much discussion and some disagreements over the subject, Nafisi and Bijan finally decide to move to the United States. Her students are disappointed, but most of them also plan to leave eventually. Nassrin decides to go to London to live with her sister, leaving illegally since she is unable to get a passport. Nafisi has to inform the others that Nassrin has gone. Manna is particularly tense, knowing the class would end soon. Mahshid struggles with her faith and with everyone leaving. The session leaves Nafisi contemplative. These feelings continue when she encounters a former student, Miss Ruhi, at a coffee shop. Miss Ruhi had been fiercely conservative, but now looks back on the classes as enjoyable and stimulating.

Nafisi spends more time with her students as she prepares to leave. Mitra is unsure if she will go abroad and Sanaz has a new love. The professor also spends time with her "magician," talking about Austen and about a book she wants to write. She leaves his house for the last time somewhat melancholy, yet also "thinking how wonderful it is to be a woman and a writer at the end of the twentieth century."

Epilogue

Nafisi and her family leave Tehran in June 1997. Iran changes in her absence. Women begin to enjoy more freedom: they are allowed to wear shorter robes and more colorful scarves, for example. Mitra, Sanaz, Azan, and Yassi eventually follow Nassrin and Nafisi and go abroad. Mahshid and Manna remain in Iran.

CHARACTERS

A

Dr. A is the head of the English Department at the University of Tehran. He is intellectually supportive of Nafisi as a professor. He eventually falls out of favor with the government, resigns his post, and moves to the United States.

Azin

Azin is a student who participates in Nafisi's home-based literature class. She has been married three times. She is physically abused by her current husband, a rich merchant, and wants to divorce him at times, but does not want to lose custody of her young daughter. After her husband takes away her daughter, she divorces him, remarries, and moves to the United States.

Bahri

Mr. Bahri is a student in the first class Nafisi teaches at the University of Tehran. She often sees him at the many meetings held while she is a professor there. While he is a politically active radical whose power grows during her tenure at the university, he enjoys her class, attends regularly, and works behind the scenes in support of her teaching despite her vocal disagreement with many of his political and personal views. After a particularly engrossing discussion with Nafisi early in her tenure, Mr. Bahri withdraws his hands when she tries to touch him in a gesture of friendship.

Dara

Dara is the son and younger child of Nafisi and her husband, Bijan. He was born in 1985.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books was released as an unabridged audiobook by Recorded Books in 2004. It is narrated by Lisette Lecat.

Farideh

Farideh is a female colleague of Nafisi at the University of Tehran. Like Nafisi, she is adamant about not wearing the veil, is removed from her post, and later moves to Europe.

Farzan

Mr. Farzan is a student in the first class Nafisi teaches at the University of Tehran. He acts as the judge in the class's trial of The Great Gatsby.

Forsati

Mr. Forsati is Nafisi's student at Allameh Tabatabai University. A politically active Muslim, he is the head of the Islamic Jihad, a powerful student organization. Mr. Forsati often brings Nafisi videos of American films, a subject he adores.

Ghomi

Mr. Ghomi is Nafisi's student in at least two classes at Allameh Tabatabai University, as well as a friend of Mr. Nahvi. Mr. Ghomi serves in the militia and is often absent from class. Mr. Ghomi often objects to what Nafisi says in class and dislikes Henry James and his work. He speaks out in particular against the title character in Daisy Miller.

Hamid

Hamid is Nafisi's student at Allameh Tabatabai University. He marries one of her home-class students, Mitra.

Hatef

Miss Hatef is a student of Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University and a member of the Muslim Students' Association.

Jeff

Jeff is an American reporter Nafisi befriends while she is on the faculty at the University of Tehran.

K

Dr. K is a professor in the English Department at the University of Tehran. He joins the faculty at the same time as Nafisi.

Tahereh Khanoom

Tahereh Khanoom does the housework in Nafisi's household. She also takes care of the family's children on occasion.

The Kid

The Kid is a protégé of Nafisi's friend, "my magician."

Laleh

Laleh serves on the faculty of the University of Tehran with Nafisi. She is also adamant about not being forced to wear the veil, and once is chased down by a guard across campus for being unveiled. She is eventually expelled from her post over her refusal to obey.

Mahshid

Mahshid is a student who takes part in Nafisi's home-based literature class and is close friends with Nassrin. Sensitive and sometimes defensive, she is also the most conservative of the students and a devout Muslim. Mahshid had worn a head scarf before the revolution in Iran. She had also served time in jail because she had been affiliated with a religious organization deemed dissident and came out of the experience with an injured kidney. She previously audited Nafisi's literature classes at Allameh Tabatabai University.

Mahtab

Mahtab is a student in the first class Nafisi taught at the University of Tehran. She is a radical, Marxist student who is politically active. Mahtab brings her neighbor Nassrin, then a young teenager, to the class and convinces Nafisi to let Nassrin sit in. Nafisi learns that Mahtab had spent two-and-a-half years in jail where she reflected on her classes with Nafisi. Later, she marries and has several children.

Manna

Manna is a graduate student who takes part in Nafisi's home-based literature class. She is a poet whom Nafisi admires for her ability to make "poetry out of things most people cast aside." Manna had audited literature classes with Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University. She is married to Nima.

Mitra

Mitra is a participant in Nafisi's home-based literature class. She is friends with Sanaz outside of class. Mitra had been a student of Nafisi's at Allameh Tabatabai University and is married to Hamid.

Mina

Mina is Nafisi's friend and a scholar who once focused on author Henry James. She had previously taught at the University of Tehran and started writing a book on James while on sabbatical at Boston University. After being expelled from the University of Tehran, she does not teach again. Working as a translator, she suffers from depression and is devastated by the death of her brother.

My Magician

"My magician" is Nafisi's nickname for her intellectual male friend and mentor in Tehran. He was a fiction writer and film critic who taught drama and film at the University of Tehran's Fine Arts Department before the revolution in Iran. During the revolution, he quit teaching because of a disagreement with his drama department colleagues over proposed changes in curriculum. He essentially dropped out of society, and would not write or work anymore. Spending most of his time in his apartment, he offers his intellectual support to a small group of people, including Nafisi, whom he often advises on writing, books, and her students during their twice-weekly meetings. He also has access to forbidden books and videos and gives these items to friends such as Nafisi. He will not speak to her after she leaves Iran.

Bijan Naderi

Bijan is Nafisi's second husband. They meet in the United States and are married in 1977. He has a successful private company in Tehran, and is supportive of his wife, her work, and her interests. When Nafisi wants to leave Iran, Bijan is initially resistant, but after much discussion and argument, he agrees they should move to the United States.

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi is the author, narrator, and primary character in Reading Lolita in Tehran. Every experience and idea in Reading Lolita in Tehran is filtered through her perception. A native of Iran, her father was once mayor of Tehran while her mother once served in the Iranian parliament. As a teenager, Nafisi is educated in Europe, returning home only when her father is arrested. After marrying her first husband, whom she later divorces, Nafisi spends a number of years in the United States and completes her education at the University of Oklahoma.

Most of the action in the memoir takes place when she returns to Iran with her second husband, Bijan, and teaches literature classes at various universities in Tehran. The Iran she left was quite different from the one she returns to as a revolution is in process. As the Ayatollah Khomeini takes power and the government places more restrictions on citizens, Nafisi grows uncomfortable with the new regulations and the limitations on women's rights. The constant violence and harassment, as well as the loss of her sense of self, trouble her deeply.

While Nafisi enjoys teaching, she finds the restrictions at the universities too much to bear. In the mid-1990s, she quits her last university teaching post in Iran and decides to hold a small class for women in her home. Choosing her best pupils for the class, Nafisi and her students discuss literature and their lives under the oppressive regime. Nafisi uses ideas from the books they discuss to underscore her impressions of life in the totalitarian society. The class, her books, and her writing give her purpose under trying circumstances. Nafisi eventually convinces her husband to move their family back to the United States.

Nafisi's Father

Nafisi's father was once the mayor of Tehran, and served time in jail after he lost favor as a politician.

Nafisi's Mother

Nafisi's mother lives in the apartment downstairs from Nafisi and her family. She had been a member of the Iranian parliament in the 1960s. She lives alone, but spends much time with Nafisi, her family, and the students in Nafisi's home-based class. Nafisi's mother often makes the class Turkish coffee.

Nahvi

Mr. Nahvi is a student of Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University, and an older friend of Mr. Ghomi.

Nassrin

Nassrin is a student in Nafisi's home-based literature class and is close friends with Mahshid. She first audits one of the professor's literature classes at the University of Tehran when she is a young teen. Her neighbor Mahtab introduces her to Nafisi for the first time. After serving three years in prison, Nassrin resumes her academic career and again becomes a student of Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University. She has to lie to her father to be able to come to the class at Nafisi's home. Before the class ends with Nafisi's move to America, Nassrin leaves Iran illegally to live with her sister in England.

Negar

Negar is the daughter and oldest child of Nafisi and her husband, Bijan. She was born in 1984.

Nima

Nima is a graduate student of literature who audits classes taught by Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University. He convinces her to be his dissertation advisor at the University of Tehran while she teaches at Allameh Tabatabai University. Nima wants to be in her home-based literature class, but she refuses to include him because a co-ed class would be too risky. Nima is married to Manna, and lives with Manna's mother and younger sister in Iran.

Nyazi

Mr. Nyazi is a student in Nafisi's first class at the University of Tehran, and a devout Muslim. He files a complaint against the novel The Great Gatsby, leading Nafisi to put the novel on trial in the class. Mr. Nyazi acts as the prosecutor in the classroom trial. Mr. Nyazi also tries to court Mitra while she is secretly dating her future husband, Hamid.

R

See My Magician.

Ramin

Ramin is the man whom Nassrin briefly dates and believes she loves at one point. He is a part-time teacher with a master's degree in philosophy.

Razieh

Razieh was a poor student of Nafisi at the Alzahrah University, a fan of Henry James, and a practicing member of Mujahideen. Before she was executed, Razieh shared a jail cell with Mahtab. The pair talked about the professor and their classes with her. Nafisi is crushed by news of her death.

Reza

Reza is the best friend of the man Nafisi calls "my magician."

Rezvan

Mrs. Rezvan is a teacher at Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran who compels Nafisi to return to teaching. A fan of Nafisi's work, Mrs. Rezvan uses her connections to get her the job, allows her to teach the way she wants, and keeps her there for several years despite the controversies that develop. Mrs. Rezvan later receives a scholarship to study for her Ph.D. in Canada and leaves before the end of Nafisi's tenure at the university.

Ruhi

Miss Ruhi is Nafisi's student at Allameh Tabatabai University and a member of the Muslim Students' Association. Though Miss Ruhi objected to certain aspects of the novels the class read, Nafisi learns through a chance meeting shortly before she leaves Iran that her work had left an unexpected impression on her former student.

Sanaz

Sanaz is a student in Nafisi's home-based literature class. She is friends with Mitra outside of class. She is often driven to class by her younger brother, who tries to assert authority over her. Sanaz is arrested with friends while on vacation. After signing a false confession and enduring lashes, she and her friends are freed. Sanaz becomes engaged to Ali, a man she has not seen in six years but who has been a sweetheart since the age of eleven. Their engagement lasts just a few weeks.

Vida

Vida is a student in Nafisi's first class at the University of Tehran. She is close friends with Zarrin. She does not seem concerned with the revolutionary activities going on around them, but focuses on academics.

Yassi

Yassi is a student in Nafisi's home-based literature class. Despite family opposition, Yassi leaves her home in Shiraz to attend university in Tehran. As a first-year student, Yassi had audited graduate classes taught by Nafisi at Allameh Tabatabai University. She is the youngest of the group and grows close to Nafisi's family, often spending the night in their home. Fond of her uncles who lived abroad in Europe and the United States, she eventually moves to the United States to attend graduate school.

Zarrin

Zarrin is a student in the first class Nafisi teaches at the University of Tehran. She is close friends with Vida, and does not seem concerned with the revolutionary activities going on around her. She acts as the defense attorney in the classroom trial of The Great Gatsby.

THEMES

Resistance

One of the primary themes of Reading Lolita in Tehran is resistance. Nafisi continually tries to resist restrictions the Iranian government and the university place on her as a woman and as a professor. While teaching at the University of Tehran, she fights being forced to wear a veil while in the classroom. Both the university administration and a student who supports the revolution, Mr. Bahri, try to convince her to wear the veil and remain in her post. Nafisi would rather resign her position there than submit to such restrictions. It is a principle she will not compromise.

Though Nafisi resists as many societal and governmental restrictions as she can, she does submit when she feels she has to. When the law states that women, in public, first must wear a veil, and later be covered in robes as well as a veil or a chador, Nafisi dons the necessary garments. She even wears what is necessary to be able to teach at Allameh Tabatabai University. Yet Nafisi continues to resist other things. Ignoring laws forbidding a woman to appear in public with men they are not related to, she walks and talks with her mentor, "my magician," among others. Nafisi also refuses to compromise over what and how she will teach in her classrooms. When she feels too restricted again, Nafisi decides to drop out of university life and teach on her own terms at home, a decision that leads to her Thursday morning literature class.

Oppression of Women

Throughout the text of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi often describes her world through gender roles, primarily focusing on women in Iranian society. Returning to Iran from life in the West with her second husband, Bijan, in the late 1970s, Nafisi is very aware of the change in women's status in her native country. For much of the twentieth century, women could not marry before the age of eighteen, but by the mid-1980s, after the revolution, age of marriage-ability was lowered to only nine. Women faced many more new restrictions, including the requirement that they be veiled in public. Women who committed adultery or prostitution were stoned to death. They only had half the legal value of men. They could only be seen in public with men who were family members. In Nafisi's opinion, women had become irrelevant in Iran, and she thought of herself as such on several occasions. What made the situation worse was that she could remember when Iranian women had more freedom. For example, Nafisi knew that her mother was one of the first women elected to Parliament in 1960s. The female students in her home-based literature class had no such freedoms in their past to remember.

Teachers and Students

The theme of education and the teacher-student relationship is emphasized in Nafisi's memoir. Most of the book's episodes, both good and bad, take place in a classroom or on a university campus. Nafisi wants her students of both genders to gain an appreciation of literature and its importance. While she faces difficulties with the restrictions she is under and is sometimes the subject of harassment, Nafisi will not compromise her teaching methodologies. Though male students like Mr. Bahdi sometimes try her patience and highlight her diminished place in society as a woman, Nafisi also accepts that this student in particular worked behind the scenes on her behalf.

Her relationships with her female students are more complex—running the gamut from hostile to very friendly—but they help her appreciate the power of her position and what she accomplishes. When former student Mahtab tells Nafisi about her time in prison, the professor learns that Mahtab and her cellmate, another former student named Razieh, had reminisced and laughed about their classroom discussions while confined before Razieh was executed. Just as Nafisi values the influence of her mentor in her own life, her influence on her students is clearly a source of strength in troubled times.

Acceptance and Belonging

In her last two years in Tehran, Nafisi finds her greatest satisfaction as a teacher in the class she decides to hold at her home. Each Thursday morning, seven female students she has carefully selected meet to discuss great literature and its relationship to their realities. While Nafisi's memoir focuses on the discussions and the books, she also emphasizes the community that developed among the women. Her students were from diverse backgrounds, had different political beliefs, and varied in age, marital status, and personality. There was often conflict between them over the books, opinions, and life choices. Yet the women could be themselves in that classroom in ways they could not in general Iranian society. They took off their robes, veils, and chadors, and revealed who they were to each other and the professor. Each woman found acceptance and belonging, and was allowed to grow and develop intellectually and socially.

Transcending the books and the class, the women sometimes offered support to each other when they faced difficulties, such as when Sanaz's fiancé broke off their engagement. Nafisi's family also became close to all of them, with her mother and her housekeeper, Tahereh Kanoom, becoming familiar in the class routine. Some students, like Yassi, even stayed overnight at Nafisi's home on a regular basis. This community was especially important to Nafisi, who essentially dropped out of Iranian academia after the end of her last post. The community and camaraderie kept her going when she felt she had no place in Iranian society.

STYLE

Memoir

First and foremost, Reading Lolita is a memoir. Unlike a biography, which tells the story of a person's life, a memoir provides the author's recollections of a particular period in his or her life. Subjects may be one person's witness to history (like Elie Wiesel's Night), an ordinary person's triumph (like Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), a philosopher's worldview (like Henry David Thoreau's Walden, an eccentric's exploits (like Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant), or a hero's time on the world stage (like George Patton's War As I Knew It). In her memoir, Nafisi gives perspective of what life was like in Iran from the late 1970s to the late 1990s for herself and other women as well as for other academics and her family. She describes in detail the difficulties of life under the totalitarian regime and how it deeply affected her and her sense of self. She also illustrates her belief in literature's enduring power to inspire.

Literary Criticism

In addition to being a memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran also provides some literary criticism. Literary criticism is the interpretation, analysis, and judgment of literature, in this case great novels. Nafisi inserts her ideas about certain books in the text, primarily around the discussions of the books in her classes or with students, to highlight and illustrate her points. Occasionally, Nafisi offers a more in-depth analysis of a novel. For example, in the chapter 26 of "Part III: James," the professor interprets James's Washington Square and places it in the greater context of his books in remembrance of deceased former student Razieh.

Nonlinear Structure

The plot of Reading Lolita in Tehran is not linear. That is, it is does not follow the events of Nafisi's life in the sequence in which they occurred. Nafisi moves back and forth through time to draw parallels between events and evoke a response in readers. She often uses flashbacks—events that occurred before the actual story began—and episodes—descriptions of individual events—as part of the text.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

Read one of the novels mentioned in Reading Lolita in Tehran, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Write a paper in which you discuss your feelings about the novel and how it relates to your daily realities.
Put a controversial book—one from the memoir or another title—on trial in class, like Nafisi's university students did with The Great Gatsby. Pick a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, defendants, and witnesses, and have the rest of the class act as a jury.
Research the lives of women in Iran since 1997, when Nafisi left. Some believe Iranian women have been gaining freedom since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Compare the information you found with Nafisi's experiences in Iran from 1979 to 1997 in an essay.
Divide the class into small groups of about five to eight students. Have each group read a different classic novel of the nineteenth or early twentieth century, keep a diary of their thoughts, and discuss how the novel reflects and relates to their daily lives. Each group can then present its findings to the class and lead a discussion among all students about the great novel and its meaning.
Some critics complained that the students in Nafisi's home-based class were indistinct characters that are easily confused. Do you agree? Create character sketches of the students, describing each woman's situation, personality, experience, and favorite books. In a group, discuss the importance of each student to the memoir.

The memoir begins with Nafisi giving a brief explanation of how she came to start the class in her home, a description of each of the students, and their first meeting. In chapter 5 of "Part I: Lolita," Nafisi begins with a word a student utters ("Upsilamda!"), gives more background on the class, describes the first book they discussed, and then moves back to a memory about the word from an earlier time. The next chapter of the section offers an analysis of a different work by Nabokov, the author of Lolita, before Nafisi relates the book to life in Iran. Chapter 7 focuses on more explanation of life in Iran, beginning in 1994 and ending with her home-based class.

First-Person Point of View

Nafisi relates the incidents that occur in her memoir strictly from her own point of view. She uses the personal, or first-person, voice, which means that "I," and sometimes "we," are the primary pronouns used. Nafisi is also the primary protagonist, as the central character in the stories she tells. Every incident in the book is filtered through her perspective, though she is not always at the center of the story.

Setting

The setting is important to understanding Reading Lolita in Tehran. The memoir is set in Tehran, Iran, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. That period of time marked extreme changes in Iranian society as the monarchy, headed by the Shah of Iran, was overthrown in favor of a revolutionary government that put its interpretation of Islamic law at the center of society. The experiences that Nafisi has are a direct result of the memoir's setting.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Islamic Revolution in Iran

The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, was in power from the early 1940s until 1979. Often supported by western governments, the Shah modernized Iran, helped the country develop economically and commercially, and brought in many western customs and practices. Many of his reforms, however, were not popular with most Iranians. Inflation was extremely high in the 1960s and 1970s, creating widespread economic hardships. Furthermore, a number of Iranians wanted an Islamic government, not a secular one. In the last two decades of Pahlavi's reign, religious and student leaders began to advocate for government change.

By the late 1970s, a leader emerged to bring focus to the emerging revolution: the Ayatollah Khomeini, a respected Islamic clergyman. Khomeini was an engaging speaker who was popular with the people. He used his oratory skills to demand change, not just in terms of religion but also in terms of economic and social improvements. Forced into exile in France in 1978, the popular Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979 when the Shah fled to Egypt under pressure.

In Iran, Khomeini organized religious and student leaders and began the revolution. The Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed on April 1, 1979, and all laws in the country were then based on the principles and traditions of Islam. Khomeini was declared the Spiritual Leader of the Islamic Revolution, the title for the cleric who served as the head of the Iranian government. (A president with lesser powers was elected, as was a parliament whose decisions could be overturned by the Council of Guardians, made up of Muslim leaders.) Khomeini and his Islamic Revolution Party took over leadership of Iran, forcing the Shah to remain in exile until he died the next year. Iran essentially became a theocracy controlled by fundamentalist Shiite Muslims.

One defining act of this new Iran was the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Islamic forces in November 1979. Fifty-two Americans who worked in the embassy were held hostage by the Iranians until January 1981. Khomeini remained in power until his death in 1989, when the Ayatollah Khamenei succeed him as the Spiritual Leader of the Islamic Revolution.

Iran-Iraq War

Soon after the Ayatollah Khomeini took over control of Iran, the country became entangled in a long war with its neighbor, Iraq. Iraq hoped to take over some of Iran's land and oil reserves and become a greater power in the Middle East by attacking Iran and overthrowing Khomeini. Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980. While Iraq sought peace in 1986, its efforts were rebuffed by Khomeini and his followers, who kept the war going for three more years to consolidate their hold on Iran through political intimidation and greater control of the military. A peace agreement was finally signed in 1989. The total cost of the war exceeded $1 trillion and left one million people dead.

The Role of Women in Iran

Though women were active participants in the Islamic Revolution in Iran, their rights were significantly restricted after Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution Party took power. Women were legally regarded as inferior to men, and could be married off at the age of nine. Men could have as many as four wives and were in charge of making decisions for the family. Men controlled where their wives and daughters could go. Women could not be in the company of a man who was not her husband or a relative. A husband had to give his written permission for a woman to travel or obtain a passport. Men also had custody of their children. All women had to follow a public dress code—the hejab—which included completely covering of one's hair and body while outside the home. Makeup was forbidden. Anyone ignoring these rules could face corporal punishment or imprisonment.

Women's education, work, and sporting opportunities were also limited. On the college and university level, women could only pursue restricted studies. Women were also limited in the kinds of jobs they could take. Women could not be judges that presided over trials or issued verdicts, for example. They could only work with permission of their husbands. Recreationally, women could not play sports if there was a chance they could be seen by men. Women could also not watch men participate in sports in which their legs could be seen.

Many women in Iran tried to resist these restrictions. Nafisi outlined many such examples in Reading Lolita in Tehran. In the late 1990s, women pressed for more custody rights over their children as well as equal inheritance rights. Women also tried to press the limits of the hejab, but more laws were passed in the late 1990s to make the code even stricter. Another law passed in 1998 called for gender segregation in hospitals and clinics wherever possible, often resulting in inferior health care for women.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Reading Lolita in Tehran was published to critical acclaim. Many reviewers praised Nafisi as a writer and lover of books. For example, Cheryl Miller of the Policy Review noted, "Nafisi is one of the most eloquent advocates of the written word to date. Every page of Nafisi's memoir is informed by her passion for literature and for teaching." Others commented on her approach as a writer. Ron Ratliff of Library Journal wrote, "Nafisi's lucid style … serves as both a testament to the human spirit that refuses to be imprisoned and to the liberating power of literature."

A number of reviewers praised the intricacies of the book's structure and Nafisi's approach as an author. Writing in the Christian Century, Trudy Bush said, "Reading Lolita in Tehran reminds one of the complex structure of a nineteenth-century novel—with a large cast of characters." Bush concluded, "Like good fiction, Nafisi's book is peopled by fully realized characters and presents a complex social realty." Another critic, Christopher Byrd of the Wilson Quarterly believed, "Nafisi has produced a deeply literary and novelistic memoir, displaying penchants for both understatement … and complexity."

Other critics saw the memoir as a political statement. Heather Hewett of the Christian Science Monitor wrote that the book "provides a stirring testament to the power of Western literature to cultivate democratic change and open-mindedness."

Not all critics found Reading Lolita in Tehran praiseworthy. While Rory Stewart of New Statesman noted, "Her precise, restrained tone reinforces the credibility of her account," he found the book "not entirely satisfying." Stewart believed it was hard to differentiate among the students and that Nafisi's writing did not reflect her as a person. Cassius Peck of the Washington Monthly also had mixed feelings. He wrote, "Reading Lolita in Tehran is not unlike the character of the country it describes: often intelligent and involving, as well as elegant, but still too often cloying and oppressive."

The positive reviews far outnumber negative ones, and most critics found the book rewarding. Cameron Kamran of the Middle East Journal called it a "provocative chronicle," while Jesse Holcomb concluded in his review for Sojourners, "What Nafisi's memoir does brilliantly is stand for dignity, humane civil society, and women's rights. She does so, however, without defaulting to knee-jerk anti-Americanism, or, conversely, a wistful glamorization of Western culture."

CRITICISM

A. Petrusso

Petrusso is a history and screenwriting scholar and freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Petrusso argues that the home-based class Nafisi taught is not the heart of the story, but merely a frame for the primary concepts in the book.

In his review of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post spends nearly the whole of his piece analyzing only the book's first section, "Part I: Lolita." This is the introductory part of Azar Nafisi's memoir in which she primarily discusses the home-based literature class for women she organized after leaving her second major university appointment in Tehran in the mid-1990s. Yardley concludes his review by arguing:

Most of the rest of the book is concerned with her life before 1995. Because she is intelligent and thoughtful and writes well, this is frequently interesting, but for long stretches the reading class almost completely vanishes. Because this is the heart of the story, the reader feels its absence keenly.

Many other critics consider Nafisi's home-based literature class for women "the heart of the story" as well. While her discussions of the class, which appear primarily in "Part I: Lolita" and "Part IV: Austen," and her students from the class are important, their main purpose is to draw the reader into the true theme of the memoir: the power of literature to console, sustain, embolden, and transform readers.

Early in "Part I: Lolita" of Reading Lolita, Nafisi states of her home-based class, "This class was the color of my dreams. It entailed an active withdrawal from a reality that had turned hostile." To appreciate the power and meaning of the class to Nafisi and her seven female students, one has to understand what happened to her to bring her to this point, and, by book's end, compelled her to leave the class and Iran behind. That is what Nafisi focuses on throughout her memoir.

Students from Nafisi's home-based class are woven into the heart of the text, "Part II: Gatsby" and "Part III: James," and they help unify the memoir as a larger work. They had all been her students at various universities in Tehran, and each suffered in post-revolutionary Iran just as Nafisi did. These female students, however, are not the whole story of Nafisi's time in Iran as an educator and a woman, and are not treated as such in the book.

One important theme that "Part I: Lolita" does introduce is Nafisi's devotion to teaching. An Iranian woman who was friends with Nafisi from her time in Iran spoke about the professor to reporter Karl Vick of the Washington Post. Vick wrote, "She had seen Nafisi teach English literature at universities in Tehran, and marveled watching a woman she knew as almost painfully shy in private transformed into a dazzling lecturer." The unidentified woman, who appears in Reading Lolita in Tehran as a bookseller, told Vick, "She teaches with every cell in her body."

When Nafisi took her first position at the University of Tehran in 1979, as described in "Part II: Gatsby," she felt both "honored" and "intimidated." Despite being nervous about teaching early in her career, one of Nafisi's goals as an educator from the first was to affect change in her students' lives through literature. Nafisi writes, "I told my students that I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works … made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes." Nafisi focused on such goals at the University of Tehran despite the widespread battles for the heart of the country and tumultuous changes in Iranian society going on around her.

While the women in her home-based class generally receive more personal attention from Nafisi than her university students, she shares several incidents in which her university students are affected by her teaching. For example, in "Part III: James," Nafisi learns about a former female student named Razieh, whom the professor had taught at Alzahrah University and who once passionately defended her classmates when the professor angrily accused them of having low academic standards. Mahtab, who had a class with the professor at the University of Tehran and later participates in the home-based class, tells Nafisi of Razieh's fate. While the women shared a cell in prison, they talked of the literature classes they had with Nafisi and "laughed a lot." Mahtab was later released but Razieh had been executed, and news of her death crushes Nafisi. She writes, "[prison] is not where I had imagined they would take my favorite novelists."

Another example of her teaching's impact occurs near the end of Reading Lolita, just before Nafisi leaves Iran with her family. The professor is in a pastry shop when she encounters a former student from Allameh Tabatabai University, Miss Ruhi, who was introduced in "Part III: James." Miss Ruhi was conservative and a member of the Muslim Students Association. Nafisi remembers her as a student who passionately told the professor that Catherine and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights were immoral and implied that her professor should censor certain words which would offend Muslims in the works they read.

Nafisi learns from their brief encounter that Miss Ruhi loved Jane Austen, wished she had been included in the Dear Jane Society (a private joke Nafisi shared with only a few of her students), and missed being at university. Nafisi writes of her, "At the time, she had often wondered why she continued with English literature … and now she was glad that she had continued. She felt she had something the others did not." Miss Ruhi, now married and a mother, even had a secret nickname for her infant daughter: "Daisy," after the free-spirited title character in Henry James's Daisy Miller. Nafisi had indeed changed her students through her classes.

Another theme first illuminated in "Part I: Lolita" and explored in the rest of the text is Nafisi's adoration of books and her belief in the power of literature. Her passion for literature is what drives her passion for teaching. She describes how books helped her through the difficult nights in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, when Tehran was being bombed and she could not sleep. After she is forced out of the University of Tehran for refusing to wear a veil, a book group studying classical Persian literature gives her a sense of relevance when she feels lost. This group compels Nafisi to begin writing articles in Persian, translate books written in English into Persian, and launch a full-scale academic writing career.

This love of literature also comes through Nafisi's analysis of various novels relevantly positioned throughout the text. In "Part III: James," for example, Nafisi spends several pages interpreting Razieh's favorite book, Henry James's Washington Square, as a memorial to her executed student. As she begins what amounts to a brief essay on the book, Nafisi asks, "What was it about Washington Square that had so intrigued Razieh? True, there had been identification … but it was not that simple." Reaching the core of her argument, Nafisi writes,

This respect for others, empathy, lies at the heart of the novel. It is the quality that links Austen to Flaubert and James to Nabokov and Bellow. This, I believe, is how the villain in modern fiction is born: a creature without compassion, without empathy.

Nafisi then relates this idea to her greater theme of the whole memoir: that the government of post-revolutionary Iran was such a villain. She goes on:

I think most of my students would have agreed with this definition of evil, because it was so close to their own experience. Lack of empathy was to my mind the central sin of the regime, from which all others flowed.

A third important theme is also set forth from the beginning of the memoir: the compromises Nafisi makes every day in post-revolutionary Iran to share her passion for books in a classroom as well as in daily life. In "Part II: Gatsby," Nafisi focuses on her experiences from when she taught at the University of Tehran, from 1979 to 1981. While she enjoyed teaching—even her difficult students such as Mr. Nyasi, whose condemnation of The Great Gatsby as immoral impels her to stage a mock trial of the book in class—Nafisi also emphasizes the political and social tensions which constantly hovered over her. Nafisi sometimes liked the work of a student named Mr. Bahri, who was active in a powerful student organization. Though Nafisi and Mr. Bahri butt heads on political issues, he supports her and her methods of teaching. To some degree, Nafisi also resents that he worked behind the scenes in support of her, and that his backing delayed her expulsion from her teaching position.

While the endless demonstrations, arrests, and trials wear on Nafisi, she takes more personal offense at women having to be veiled at all times in public. For her, this imposition symbolizes the greater erosion of Iranian women's rights. In the first years of post-revolutionary Iran, forcing women to wear the veil was seen as "the complete victory of the Islamic aspect of the Revolution," Nafisi writes. She believes that forcing all women to wear the veil at all times in public is an insult to the true followers of Islam, as it cheapens the gesture's religious meaning by making it a statement of political control. Nafisi eventually loses her job at the University of Tehran because of her refusal to compromise on this matter. Soon, the government forces her to wear more than a veil in public, decreeing that women must wear a chador, or a veil with a long robe, to completely cover their bodies.

While these restrictions anger Nafisi, they also force her to grow intellectually and as an educator in unexpected ways. Being expelled from the University of Tehran leads her to her writing career. She also reads more books in different genres, especially during her sleepless nights during the Iraqi bombing of Tehran, which leads to a more diverse syllabus when she teaches again. Though she feels irrelevant in so many ways at the end of part II and beginning of part III, Nafisi finds ways to make herself relevant.

One important relationship that contributes to this feeling is with the man she calls "my magician." He is a former professor, critic, and writer who chose to drop out of society after the revolution and essentially refuses to participate. "My magician" refused to compromise on what he would teach, left his post, and limited his contacts to a select few friends. The self-confidence he exudes and the intellectual support he gives to Nafisi makes life in Iran more bearable. He has nothing to do with her home-based class directly, but plenty to do with choices she makes.

The arguments of "my magician" push Nafisi to take her second primary teaching position, at Allameh Tabatabai University, during the 1980s. She reluctantly agrees to teach while wearing the veil, but will not compromise on what and how she teaches. By the early 1990s, she resigns her position rather than accepting such restrictions. Again needing to feel relevant, she starts her home-based class in 1995 and teaches the way she wants.

Thus, the home-based class is scaffolding on which the core ideas of the memoir hang. The class is her personal, successful rebellion, and readers understand its origin by the book's end. Nafisi feels free in that small intellectual space in her home. Her students are free there to be themselves without the robes and veils, but they are not free anywhere else in Iran. The students and the class are not the heart of Reading Lolita, but are key because they represent Nafisi's success. In sharing her passion for literature, she teaches a handful of young women how to survive.

Source: A. Petrusso, Critical Essay on Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2007.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

Lolita (1955), a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, is one of the books read by Nafisi's students and analyzed in the memoir. It focuses on Humbert Humbert's sexual obsession with the twelve-year-old title character.

The Bookseller of Kabul (2003), a memoir by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, offers her observations on the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, as it recovered from war in 2002. It includes including information on women living under Islamic rule.

Daisy Miller (1858), by Henry James, is another of the works studied by Nafisi's students. The novel focuses on the title character, an American, traveling in Europe, as seen through the eyes of another American, Frederick Winterbourne.

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (2006), is a collection of essays by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who focuses on her experiences as a Muslim woman and calls for their freedom from oppression for all Muslim women.

Kate Flint

In the following excerpt, Flint examines the importance of reading as a freedom, and as a foundation for community.

[Text Not Available]

Source: Kate Flint, "Women and Reading," in Signs, Vol. 31, No. 2, Winter 2006, pp. 511-36.

Azar Nafisi

In the following essay, Nafisi discusses the importance of literature as a conduit for understanding across cultures.

What most of the mass media offers the public about Iran or Afghanistan or even about America is not knowledge; it's just soundbites. But, to look at it another way, what kind of a culture relies for knowledge just on media? The media is supposed to serve one aspect of our needs. The other aspect must be satisfied elsewhere, which is through imaginative knowledge.

Part of the reason people liked my book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was because they could experience through reading it what a young girl experienced in a country called an Islamic Republic. And they realized that her desires and aspirations were not very different from their own. As a result the rather homogenized image of women from Iran has partly changed.

The media have tended to reduce Iranian society into the Khomeini Era or the era of the Shah. The Iranian society was there before the revolution and before the Shah. If we gained certain liberties at the time of the Shah—whether women's rights or the openness to literature from Byron to Wordsworth to Victor Hugo—it was mainly because various forces in Iranian society wanted it. Before the fatwa, Salman Rushdie was a very popular writer. His first two novels were translated into Persian and became best-sellers. That's why this Islamist system cannot force the Iranian people to give them up.

For a while it seemed like the only one who was talking about classics in America was Oprah, and I'm happy she did so. People are reading Anna Karenina again, and that's promising. I am not trying to turn this into a mass movement. Reading literature has not at anytime in history been a mass phenomenon. But we need to guard the quality of our knowledge; otherwise we will become a very empty culture.

Open Fiction

I actually did teach Western literature to Iranian women in real life. Some people criticized me and said, "Why didn't you talk about Persian literature?" I tell them that I was an English professor, this is what I studied. Secondly, I told my critics that people should not be put in boxes. A white male from Milwaukee should be talking about Iranian literature and the woman from Afghanistan should be talking about French or Armenian literature. This is how we grow.

Living in a country which has deprived its people any actual contact with the outside world for a very long time, I have seen that the literature and culture of that world as a whole became a genuine means of connection. Many of my students really were hungry to know about what happened outside Iran. Further, works of fiction have a power to create images on their own. They make you imagine life not just as it is, but as it could be, or it should be. So for us living in Iran there were so many closed spaces there, and fiction opened those spaces.

My book has not been published officially in Iran. But the electronic era transcends restrictions! People in Iran have downloaded reviews and sections of my book from the Internet. Also there are many people, so I hear, who take the book with them when visiting Iran and then it goes from friend to friend. Just recently there was a lovely review of Reading Lolita in a Persian magazine—even though the book hasn't been published in Iran. That was very encouraging.

Beyond the Veil

I was expelled from the university for refusing to wear the veil. Later, in 1997, I decided to leave the country. Now, my book has been a best seller in America. This is the irony of life. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to be deprived of what we have in order to appreciate it. This experience keeps coming up. But what I wanted to convey in my book was that my situation was not that exceptional. I wanted to talk not so much about myself, but about so-called ordinary people in Iran—those whose voices we don't hear as much because we always hear about the elite. I wanted to express the kind of ordinary courage a young woman or a young man has in the face of an oppressive situation.

At Home in the Book

My home is a portable one. I used to quote to my students Vladimir Nabokov saying that a writer's books are his identity papers. And this is really good because on one hand we live in a world with boundaries and nationalities and specific identities, on the other we need the world of imagination, which is without boundaries. I call it the Republic of Imagination.

This is a romantic and, at the same time, a universal ideal. We all need ideals that seem impossible in order for us to continue. Otherwise we will stop striving.

Reform Within

One of the good things about the revolution in Iran was that it made us look at ourselves critically. We could not blame the world for all the things that happened to us. Because this new system came in the name of religion, there was a movement from within the religious community, especially among the young and religious intellectuals who began to reevaluate their views, who recognized that Iran needs to adapt to our times, that we need to reinvent certain aspects of our religion. This makes the religious discussion in Iran very vibrant and more tolerant. Sometimes when you live under dictatorship you become reactionary. If the government comes in the name of religion, then you want to destroy religion. We have to prevent that. We have to turn that desire for destruction into a desire for debate. We don't want to destroy religion. We want to make it an integral part of society.

In this context, the issue of the veil is not that simple. Traditional women in Iran, like my own grandmother, wore the veil because they felt this was the symbol of their faith. And they wanted respect for that. But when the veil becomes a symbol of politics, then it loses that sense of respect and dignity because anybody can come and attack it the way we attack our political opponents. People who insist on the veil as a political sign don't really have respect for their own religious beliefs. If you want to have a political fight, go into it. Fight it on a political front. But don't use the veil. It's like a woman saying, "I must go naked into the street because I want freedom." These sorts of statements are reactionary. They distort reality.

Many young women are under severe pressure from their families to wear the veil. They become ostracized if they don't agree to what they're being told. What we need is a free space so that issues like the veil can be discussed. We can't discuss it anymore. Every time you say something about the veil it seems as if you're either engaged in a political campaign or insulting somebody. It's a taboo, and that is so wrong.

Source: Azar Nafisi, "Fiction: Open Space in a Closed Society," in New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 12-14.

SOURCES

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Hewitt, Heather, "'Bad' Books Hidden Under the Veil of Revolution," in the Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2003, p. 21.

Holcomb, Jesse, "A Refuge From Tyranny: Iranian Women Experience the Transforming Power of Fiction," in Sojourners, Vol. 33, No. 5, May 2004, p. 38.

Kamran, Cameron, Review of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books in the Middle East Journal, Vol. 57, No. 3, Summer 2003, p. 505.

Luce, Edward, "War of the Words," in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine (London), April 29, 2006, p. 16.

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