Rating: 
Summary: Sex with a man you loathe. . .
Review: Reading the reviews and the dust jacket, you can get the idea that this is a book about a book club. For this reader, it is more directly about the impact of the Islamic revolution on the lives of educated women in Iran. There women are required at the risk of their lives to wear the "veil," which symbolizes the surrender of their independence to a government that uses fear and intimidation to control them and, in the words of the author, make them "irrelevant."The author, now living in the US, tells of almost two decades in Iran, as a teacher of English and American literature. She tells of the great hopes for reform after the fall of the Shah and the return from exile of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and with her we watch in horror as the revolution takes Iran by force instead into its medieval past. There are arrests, murders, and executions and those who can, flee to the West. The transformation of Iran is charted by the repressive attempts to make women invisible, by covering them in public from head to toe. It becomes a world in which wearing fingernail polish, even under gloves, is a punishable offense. And punishment, as we learn, is typically brutal. The author escapes from this violence into the imaginative world of Western novels (from Nabokov to Dashiell Hammet) where she finds democratic ideals expressed in fiction's ability to help us empathize with other people. For her, it is the heart that has gone out of the gun-wielding moral police that want to sweep away all but complete submission to their fundamentalist form of Islam. And while she is a teacher, she must deal with classes filled with students who have been polarized by the political forces around them. All, curiously, are in single agreement that the West is corrupt and absolutely evil. Meanwhile, the novels of Western writers engage them, sometimes furiously. A wonderful sequence in the book concerns a mock trial in the classroom in which "The Great Gatsby" is brought up on charges of immorality. "Lolita," we discover, becomes a story of a girl who finally escapes from the clutches of a man who wants to erase who she is and turn her into a figment of his imagination. It's not an allegory of Iran, Nafisi insists, but it's hard not to see the parallels. The contamination of personal relationships between men and women and its impact on love and marriage inform their readings of James and Austen. Meanwhile, even as her classes meet to argue the merits of these authors, their books are disappearing as one bookstore after another is closed down. Added to all this is an account of living through eight years of war with Iraq, while missiles fall on Tehran and the numbers of casualties on the front lines mount. After leaving teaching, the author assembles a hand-picked group of former students, all female, to meet weekly at her home and talk more about books. Here the individual personalities and histories of each come to the fore, and we get a glimpse (as in fiction) into personal worlds experienced intensely under circumstances that have nearly robbed them of their identities. It's easy to go on and on about this book. There is so much packed into it. Needless to say, I recommend it highly, especially to anyone who loves books or has taught literature. Obviously, it also informs many gender issues. For male readers, such as myself, it is like an extended version of Virginia Woolf's illuminating "A Room of One's Own." The author and her young students show how the lives of both men and women are impoverished in a world where one sex attempts to assume control over the other. For me, the book is best summed up in the author's words near the end: "Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe." The books is not a polemic, and as the author would be first to admit, there are many other voices to be heard on the subject of Iran, its government, and its role in the world. For this reader, her book opens a door into a complex subject that invites one to read more and know more.
Rating:
Summary: Not your average book club
Review: Talk about a zinger of a book club! The genesis of Reading Lolita in Tehran is a book club gathered into the home of Asar Nafisi, after she was expelled from university for refusing hijab. Many of the young women participating in the book club have also suffered under the repressive regime, some in jail, others in 'family cloisters,' although an interesting minority are religiously conservative. Through this extraordinary group of women who gathered to discuss forbidden works of Western literature, we learn about the lives of women in Iran and how exposure to literature can lead to rebirth.
A book that defies genre, refuses to be categorized, Reading Lolita works as literature, memoir, history, anthropology, and philosophy. Highest recommendation for this beautiful and thought-provoking meld of life with literature.
Rating:
Summary: fantastic
Review: This is a fantastically well written memoir. I am a fan of memoirs, enjoying the truth more than I do the fatasy. This book is above and beyond what i expected. The courage that was faced through all the terrible ordeals is astounding. If you read this book for any reason do it for the fact that you will come away with the feeling that anyone can come out of the shadows in to the light with the strength and determination and the courage of a lion. Excellent,Excellent book! Other corageous books to look for (Memoirs) Nightmares Echo, My Fractured Life, Secret Life of Bees, Running With Scissors
Rating: 
Summary: Experiences of a Persian girl
Review: Before I start, I should say that Dr.Nafisi is a great writer with wonderful skills. However, what she writes is not necessarily true. I lived in Iran for 18 years and I moved to the US recently. I found her story completely untrue. she lived in tehran, the capital, just like me. and the year she decided to teach "western literature" to her seven female students was 1995 meaning that Iran was pretty much modern.
I read all these literature books that she mentioned in my classes in high school. Neither I nor my professors had any problem with teaching the books. moreover they were not scared of the government as she describes this "too risky". I just want people to read such books with an open-mind and do not believe everything that they read or here.
Rating:
Summary: An Enjoyable, Insightful Read
Review: Nafisi does a nice job of taking the reader into the lives of women forced to live under Islamic rule in Iran. Anyone interested in the struggle for gender equality or a better understanding of the life lived by many Iranian women should enjoy this book. Perhaps it strays a little too far from the theme of forbidden Western literature into the relationships between a professor and her students but if one understands that the examples of illegal novels serve as a fine, albeit small, example of oppression then the book's purpose is well served.
Rating:
Summary: This book wil change your life.
Review: What a rare gem! What a privelege to get a glimpse into a world that most of us will never visit. Azar Nafisi takes you into the intimate world of life in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and she does this through not only her eyes, but the eyes of some of the greatest writers of all time.
This book will change your view of literature and your understanding of what it really is for the women of Islamic nations to put on the robe and scarf and become "irrelevant" to the rest of society. In the pages of this memoir you not only come to love and understand the author and the women in her book group, but you also gain an understanding of yourself.
I highly reccommend this book for anyone who loves literature and would dare to view the world from another's shoes.
Rating:
Summary: an illuminating, well told memoir
Review: Dr. Nafisi does a fabulous job connecting her memories of life in Iran with literature, reminding us not only of the connections between life and fiction but also that the imagination is such a integral part of being human--no matter who you are or where you live. I learned a great deal about Iran, and Nafisi's prose is eloquent and engaging.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Look at a Different World
Review: Nafisi discusses themes of some of the greatest books in western civilization, and uses these themes as a counterpoint to her discussion of life in revolutionary Iran. In many places the lives of the students in her secret study group become almost inseparable from the events in the novels they discuss; one becomes a mirror to the other. Throughout the book, Nafisi makes an impassioned cry for studying works of fiction in every culture, and an impassioned outcry against anything that limits imagination or the "ability to sympathize with others."
A knowledge of the various books Nafisi refers to would be helpful, but is not necessary. Even if the reader is a little lost in the text discussion, Nafisi masterfully brings her point home in the end. In addition, it is a fascinating glimpse into the diversity of a culture which appears so closed to us. History students will be transfixed with her account of the revolution's impact on the university where she taught.
Rating:
Summary: Novel redeems American Fiction
Review: With the emphasis on disposable literature in American fiction, Reading Lolita in Tehran reminds us that good fiction can still come from a great country. Like another literary breakout novel, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, this book urges a reader to proceed with appreciation and focus. The result is much like the pleasure from enjoying a glass of fine wine. Azar Nafisi writes as though English is her first language. As she pulls the reader into a study circle of selected students in a country where the very act of talking about Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita might get one executed, we become part of the study group itself. Furtive meetings and stimulating discussions paint a video in words. "When I think of Lolita," Nafisi muses, "I think of that half-alive butterfly pinned to the wall. The butterfly is not an obvious symbol, but it does suggest that Humbert fixes Lolita in the same manner that the butterfly is fixed; he wants her, a living breathing human being, to become extraordinary, to give up her life for the still life he offers her in return. Lolita's image is forever associated in the minds of her readers with that of her jailer. Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life through her prison bars." Passages like this offer a new perspective on a novel that has become an icon in Western literature, and Nafisi doesn't stop with Nabokov. When the young female students arrive at their teacher's apartment, off come the veils and smothering trappings of a repressive patriarchical regime, and the brightness in each mind is launched. The study group explores Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Henry James, and the stories of the students become woven into the stories of the authors and their characters. The students and their teacher emerge as a source of inspiration, daring to buck the system in a land where even after girls could wear scarves a bit "more daringly," powers such as "the morality police also had the right to arrest them." This book is a satisfying read for anyone, but especially for "thinkative" girls who like to understand customs in other countries. Nafisi's words linger long after the reader is done. "I left Iran," she writes, "but Iran did not leave me."
--by Kay Day, author, A Poetry Break
Rating: 
Summary: Apparently, those who can't write . . .
Review: write books about those who can. This book is absolutely unreadable. If you truly have a love of literature, skip this dross and head straight for Nabokov. If you've already read Nabokov, read him again.
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