Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (May 7-15, 2005)
Reading Lolita in Tehran mixes fiction and reality, combining autobiography and literary criticism. Set in 1995-1997 Tehran, it provides a story of a teacher and a group of her best students, their inner lives and identities hidden and suppressed in public, but their minds free and active. Woven through this is analysis of famous works of literature, given new breath in the context of Nafisi’s literature group.
Azar Nafisi has a different and often beautiful way of writing. I wish I could read, quote and retain what I read the way Nafisi does. I love the way her love of books permeates her thoughts and how she gives so much care to her words. Maybe I'll be like that one day.
Throughout, she brings you in close and then holds you off at just the right moments to make you miss a full understanding. You can feel that strange ways humans interact; how we want people to know us and have intimacy, and at the same time hold back not wanting others not know certain things. I don't think I've read a book where that strange sensation is depicted better. At the same time, because the author uses this method, the story is cold and often becomes very jarring to the reader. If you are not close to any character and are held off purposefully from understanding them, the reader’s connection to the story is minimal, as though watching a documentary. The best part of the novel are the students, and their lives and goals, but unfortunately there was minimal information provided to keep these women straight even by the novel’s end. They are forgotten for much of the story. Since we know that their identities are guarded, it is unclear how much of their tales are even true. This obscurity results in a lack of characterization and story, a major downfall of the book.
I especially liked her magician, how he was guarded, and how they both loved and hurt one another. Must have been a great relationship, but I wish we could have learned more...however, if we did, perhaps it would not have been so charming and mysterious. Meanwhile, we learn little of him, and even less of Nafisi’s own family. The purposeful emotional obscurity makes me wonder why the book is titled “memoir,” when the author conveys herself in such an impersonal manner.
Overall, this book is worth reading, analysis and discussion on many topics:
literature, history, feminism, censorship, the role of teachers, and politics.
It is definitely worth reading, but I believe it could have been even better.
