Reading Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books

Reading Lolita in Tehran, A Memoir in Books Summary | Plot Summary

In her college days in the United States, Azar Nafisi was active in student movements against the war in Vietnam and in opposing the rule of the dictator of Iran, the Shah. Nafisi slowly became homesick and, with the toppling of the Shah in 1979, decided to return home to Tehran. The revolution initially encompassed a broad spectrum of society, including leftists, secularists, monarchists and Islamists, among others. But the Islamists began employing ruthless tactics and slowly ousted or repressed all other factions. The government was now dominated by the Islamists. They began imposing a strict interpretation of Islamic society on the population. Perhaps initially regarded as revolutionary over-enthusiasm, the imposition of Islamic law and practice became ever more rigid and dogmatic over the years.

Women were the most directly impacted by the new Islamist repression. Strict codes of dress, speech and behavior were especially targeted at women. Ironically under the Shah, Iranian women were among the most advanced in the Middle East. The revolution ultimately came to represent a catastrophic rollback in the status of women in Iran.

Nafisi, teaching literature at the University of Tehran, chronicles the impact of the revolution on her life and that of her students. The daily struggle with suffocating repression and interference with academic freedom forces Nafisi to leave the university and to take up teaching a small group of her best students at her home.

The lives of Nafisi and "her girls" become interwoven with the literature they read in the class. Lessons are drawn from the works and the nature of life in Iran gives a new angle to interpreting them. Theirs is an oasis in a desert fighting gallantly against what is ultimately a losing cause. Periodic moves toward reform by the regime are ultimately reversed by powerful reactionary forces within it. Writers and intellectuals are killed. Eventually Nafisi and many of her students decide to leave Iran.

Much has been written about Iran. But this work gives a rare insight on a "street level" into what the personal lives of Iranians, especially women, are really like. The crushing impact on the young due to the repression of knowledge is moving.