Reading Lolita in Tehran

What's the title?

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Who wrote it?

Azar Nafisi

When was it written?

2003

Would I recommend it?

Yes. This book is an exercise in empathy, a survey of literature, a history lesson, and a beautiful, haunting story all its own. This is the kind of book that expands the heart as well as the mind.

What's it about?(non-spoilers)

An Iranian woman survives the autocratic takeover of her homeland by immersing herself in and sharing her love of fiction.

What did you think? (spoilers)

This book was not what I expected. They way I had heard Reading described, I thought it would be an account of a super secret book club during the Islamic Revolution. While that story is present in the book, Reading is what it says on the title – a memoir. Once I recognized my misconception, I was able to take the book on its own terms. I ended up reveling in this book and am excited to read more from Nafisi.

Over the course of the book I was introduced to Nafisi – her passions, her family, her politics, her coffee order. Nafisi is an individual worth getting to know. I found myself desperately wishing to audit one of Nafisi's classes. Her love of the books she reads is so contagious, it leaps off the page and into the reader. Authors I'd never been interested in previously, I rushed out to purchase their novels. Favorite books I already own and love, I saw in new lights. She reminded me very much of one of my favorite professors from undergrad, and reading about her classes made me nostalgic for the old stone halls of my own alma mater.

Her reading syllabus isn't the only aspect of the book decadently described. The people in Nafisi's life get the same treatment as well as her homeland. Her students, her colleagues, her family – she depicts all of them with such clear distinction that they feel as though I have met them and know them. People are complex and contradictory, and Nafisi allows those complications into not only the people she meets but to herself. She allows the readers to see people through her eyes, but she also allows us to see when her perceptions are ultimately proved wrong, or if not wrong, at least incomplete. Nafisi never paints herself as perfect and is quite willing to bare to the reader her own flaws, which makes her a better narrator in my opinion. I never felt as though she were trying to hide anything from me, trying to put things in their best light. Nafisi provides the reader with as honest an account as her memory can provide.

I thought Nafisi's handling of the warfare and trauma that occurred over this period of her life masterfully done. To be reading one moment of overbearing older brothers or even protests in the street and then to suddenly hear of one of the classmates I'd come to know and care for received twenty odd lashes on her back for no reason or how a work colleague was murdered by police and it was made to look like a suicide – it gave me a whiplash and uncertainty while reading, never knowing when or in what form unspeakable tragedy would strike, that I believe mimics the experience of actually living in such perilous and uncertain times.

People rave about Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and, while I did enjoy that graphic novel, I found Nafisi's account of the Iranian Revolution a more compelling and memorable read. Not that I think the two books should be in competition with each other. There is more than enough room to have varying accounts of Iran's recent and tumultuous history. If you enjoyed Persepolis, if you want to know more about the Iranian Revolution, if you want a book about the power of fiction, or if you just want a beautifully told story of a fascinating person – pick up Reading.

#readsreels #recommendations #books #women