Rating: 
Summary: Best book I've read in a LONG time - an award winner!
Review: "I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions." (338-339)Growing up as an American in a family of educators who have always encouraged creativity, I have always taken "free access to imagination" for granted. Although I am fully aware that America has not always practiced what is preached in terms of granting personal liberties, I have always felt confident that my freedoms would be protected by the U.S. Constitution. Reading Dr. Nafisi's thought-provoking memoir has reminded me of the fragility of such freedoms and how ruthless oppression is not just something to be read about in history books. This brilliant piece of non-fiction appealed to me on so many levels. As an avid reader and a life-long student of literature, for instance, I was intrigued by the way Nafisi intermingled the literature of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and Austen into her discussion of her life as a woman and a professor of western lit in the pre-revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. Not only does she demonstrate how life often imitates art, she also discusses how literature expands one's perception of reality. My reality was certainly expanded when I read discussions of such important topics as censorship, fundamentalism, and human rights. It didn't matter that of all the literary works discussed, Gatsby is the only one I've read - the author made me feel totally comfortable with her synopses of the works of Nabokov, James and Austen...and now I would like to thank her for expanding my personal reading list! Although I have not yet read Nabokov, James or Austen, I couldn't help drawing on my own reading experiences. As I think about how Iranian women were made "irrelevant" when they were stripped of their status and forced to wear the veil, I remember "A Handmaid's Tale", written by Margaret Atwood, a novel in which women are also stripped of their status when they are relegated to the roles of babymakers for the infertile wives of the Commanders in the Republic of Gilead. Like the Iranian women, the handmaids are forced to wear identical shroud-like garments in an attempt to strip women of their individuality. The Republic of Gilead is reminiscent of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as many other totalitarian and fundamentalist regimes in that the strict implementation of revolutionary ideologies led to a dystopian environment where personal happiness is virtually non-existent. Dr. Nafisi's discussion of censorship, the elimination of the intellectual elite and the overall mentality in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, on the other hand, brings me back to the world of Guy Montag in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451". Bradbury created a fictional society where censorship was the rule. Firemen burned books while the media controlled the minds of the populace. Without free access to the written word, intellectual thought and imagination could not develop freely in either Bradbury's fictional world or in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't know what everyone is raving about...
Review: The author must have used every 3+ syllable word in her vocabulary. No, it's not that I couldn't understand her, it was just pretentious and hollow. Come on, taking a whole paragraph to describe getting out of the shower?!? I could have done without all the flowery language and it would have been a better book. It dragged a lot in some places, too. I think if she left out all the inane descriptions and exaggerated language, it would have been about 50 pages shorter. Her intentions were good. The stories to tell were interesting but her style of writing was too phony.
Rating: 
Summary: just superb
Review: An amazing peek "behind the veil" of the lives of women in Iran. The ordinary college travails an American woman goes through pale beside the ordeals these characters must endure. The discussions of the books - classics by Nabokov, Austen and others - made me decide to read some of the ones I had missed during my own college period, certainly a sign the book made a deep impression. And the ordinary details of everyday living were rendered so sharply, I could almost taste the ice cream with cold coffee poured over it and see the various pompous men who had the power to make these women's lives miserable simply by being born into the right sex. Considering a woman can be punished by simply showing a few tendrils of hair, you can imagine what happens when they dare to do slightly more subversive things, such as break up with a boyfriend, take a radical position as a university teacher - or write a book like this one. Luckily, it made it to publication, in a way a small miracle.
Rating:
Summary: The Passionate Bibliophile Will Relish this Book!
Review: Nafisi has written not an autobiography, but a story of her love affair with certain books and authors. She divides her life into four important phases, and the four books or authors that influenced her during that time in her life. It is a mix of personal memories, important moments in Iranian history, what she was reading at the time and how it colored her impressions. She begins with what would be the next-to-the-last sequentially, the start of her home class and the reading of Lolita. That Nafisi is an excellent literature professor shines through from the beginning. She doesn't merely mention the books, she discusses them, as though with a class, discussing plot, characters, details, meaning. I, who had never been interested in Lolita or Nabokov, became convinced of his worth solely due to her enthusiasm and passion for his works. She follows with the Iranian revolution and the subsequent "trial" of Gatsby in her classroom. Henry James accompanies the times following the revolution, the war with Iraq, her feelings of uselessness and her return to teaching. She ends with Jane Austen, more about her home class, how she ended up in America and where all her "girls" are now. Though this could have easily been a depressing book, about life in Iran, it is not. Instead, Nafisi has written about the beauty and hope of the novel, how it affected her and how she wanted it to affect her students. Nafisi is a kindred spirit to all us ardent bibliophiles. She expresses in words the passion, exhilaration and transfiguration I often feel during and after reading a novel and has lit a fire in me to re-read several classics she mentioned. This is definitely a five star book!
Rating: 
Summary: Good book but slow read
Review: We picked this book as a bookclub choice earlier this year. Though well written and a great book overall, it is a very slow read. I would definitely recommend this book, but it is probably not the best choice for a young women's bookclub.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic journey of a book
Review: I understand the criticisms of the other reviews on this memoir, but feel strongly about the book's importance in the growing dialogue about our country's role in the personal/religious lives of individuals. It seems that any regime's attempt to turn fundamentalist beliefs (Christianity/Islam/pick your faith) into LAW forces citizens to live in fiction. A government's narrow conception of my personal life is not compatible with reality. The law or moral police can force us to fictionalize our public persona, but inside my robe, inside my home, inside my mind - this is real. The author asks us, 'what is fiction?'. Can you confine it to fit reality?. I absolutely loved this book. I found the literary references enlightening. The timeline of the chapters and references required my attention, but it was one of the best reads I've had in a long time!
Rating:
Summary: Women's Rights
Review: I read all of the previous reviews to see if there was anyone who had a similar reaction. I find the book fascinating, hard to put down but at the same time very frightening. Frightening in the similar ways our current government is to that of Iran's. How women are losing their reproductive rights. In that anyone who dares to disagree with the current adminstration are labelled "terrorists". How the current adminstration is doing it's best to blur the lines of seperation of church and state. I found the book very moving. It should be read by every one who is interested in the role literature plays in life.
Rating:
Summary: life reflected in literature..........
Review: Author Azar Nafisi's memoir recounts her life in Tehran during a time of upheaval and oppression, especially she feels of the women. She was a professor of Western Literature and as her world comes under attack she seems to actively retreat into a world of classic literature and it's interpretation and application to the conditions in Tehran. When her professorship is terminated she begins a study group in her home, which is where we are introduced to and get to know a bit about the lives of several young women living under these religious/political restrictions imposed upon the society of Iran. While many are placing their lives directly on the line to try and change the face of Tehran, Nafisi plants the seeds of hope and possibility in the minds of her students
in her book group.
The classics that they read make interesting "companion reads" to this novel, and while you may have read them in high school or college, it is never too late to read them again. Some of the titles are LOLITA, THE GREAT GATSBY, WASHINGTON SQUARE and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. The familiarity of the reader with these works while not necessary, will add a depth of understanding to the intricacies of this memoir.
Nafisi seems to relate nearly every event in her life and the lives of her students as a reflection of some fictional character, which under the circumstance seems to be an unusual coping method.
This memoir is an interesting look at the political/ religious upheaval that engulfed Tehran as told through the eyes and thoughts of a woman whose life revolved around the reading and exploration of literature. While the oppression of women in this society seems to be a major focus of the memoir, the fact that having one segment of a society oppressed does in fact oppress every segment and facet of that society is briefly encountered. While,in many instances, the importance of literature seems to be overshadowed by the oppression and brutality of the ruling regime, Nafisi's focus never seems to waver, which at times feels disturbing and yet at the same time hopeful.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Brilliantly written memoir that is had to put down once started. Fantastically done book. Highly recommended. I am a memoir/Non Fiction reader and this book ranks up there with some of the best memoirs/autobiographies I have read, namely 'Nightmares Echo', 'A Child Called It', 'Running With Scissors' and 'Lucky'. Read This Book! Wendy Susanne Morton
Rating:
Summary: Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books
Review: Nafisi details her experiences in Iran from 1979 to 1997, when she taught English literature in Tehran universities and hosted a private seminar on Western literature for female university students. Born and raised in Iran, the author offers readers a personal account of events in the postrevolutionary period that are often generalized by other writers. She was a witness to compulsory veiling, the "cultural revolution" that closed and purged the universities, the Iraq-Iran war (including missile attacks against Tehran), and the Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Nafisi provides readers with a view of Tehran during these tumultuous two decades and describes the ways that individuals resisted and defied the new regime's restrictive policies concerning both women's and men's behavior and dress. Readers interested in Western literature and the ways that key works could be interpreted by those living in different settings and times will find this book fascinating. Specialists on Iran, the Middle East, and Islam will also find the work unique, controversial, and informative. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Most public and academic collections and levels.
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