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Summary: Fabulous! If you love and cherish books, read this now
Review: What a fabulous find! Book-lovers should read this memoir of being female in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution contrasted with ideas and ideals of Western civilization as shown by great authors. Azir Nafisi, an English literature professor, has taken 4 novelists (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen) and shown how the ideals written about in their novels espouse those desired by her and some of her female students in authoritarian Iran. The ability to show and feel love, freedom, imagination, and passion espoused in great novels can only be dreamed by the women portrayed in this book. They gather to study forbidden books, and to find words and outlets for the feelings of inadequacy, fear, loss, and longing in their hearts fostered by a government dismissive (and fearful) of women.In addition to the internal struggles bravely portrayed, this book gives a fabulous cultural picture of life in Iran during and after the revolution. Beyond the political atmosphere, I felt the love Nafisi has for her native country and the people she left behind there.
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Summary: Compelling on many levels
Review: I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what life is like for the average person in Iran, anyone who has a passion for literature, or both. It is beautiful, thoughtful, touching, illuminating. It also gives a crash course in the history of the Islamic Revolution, which was very helpful for someone like me who never really learned much about it in school. Gorgeous and important book.
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Summary: This was so pretentious
Review: Normally I love reading about Iran and I love Iranian movies, but I couldn't finish this. Jane Austin is nauseating anyway..then to have it disected by Iranian college girls is awful. I just found this very elitist.
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Summary: Iran is one of the most important countries to read about
Review: Iran is one of the most important countries that anyone in the USA should read about - it is on the knife edge between becoming the world's first Islamic democracy (if Khatami and the moderates win : and Khatami got to power on the eager support of women in Iran), or becoming an even worse theocracy than it is now if the hard line Shiite leaders such as Khameini win. So any book on Iran that makes what is happening there accessible to a wide audience - as this book does - has become vital reading for any concerned American today. Watch Iran! What happens there might change your life.... Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)
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Summary: An intimate account of Revolutionary Iran
Review: Nafisi may not bring an end to the tyrannical mullah rule in Iran, but she has opened up a Pandora's box in this book, illustrating a wonderfully rich set of relationships that helped carry through 17 years of hardline Islamic rule. I could think of no more engaging way to relate such experiences than by building these four essays around such noted authors. Of course, any Western book takes on a political tone when discussed under a religious fundamental regime, but I was really surprised to see her draw so much out of Henry James and Jane Austen. She forced me to look at these authors anew. Of course Nabokov was an easy pick, especially
"Invitation to a Beheading," which is as much a part of the first chapter on "Lolita"
as is Lolita herself. By showing us the personal nature of totalitarianism, that of imposing one's dream upon another, we get an idea just how far these repressive regimes will go to stifle one's imagination. Both Cincinnatus and Lolita are seen as heros in Nafisi's book for being able to withstand the tyrannical hold their oppressive masters had on them. I was less taken by the Trial of Gatsby, which was probably great fun in the classroom, but didn't translate so well to the page. But here, like in all her essays, Nafisi provides wonderful anecdotes of life under Revolutionary Iran. She introduces us to her fascinating array of students, some of which she eventually brings together in a private reading group to escape the close scrutiny of the moral police. It is in her home that the young women are finally able to unwrap themselves and reveal their true identities. It is a very intimate account of her time in Iran, written with such rich insights into literature and the nature of totalitarian regimes. I hope that Nafisi's book will inspire a greater dialog in Iran, and further open the door to democracy.
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Summary: Reading Nabokov, James, Austen, Fitzgerald
Review: Azar Nafisi's memoir once again demonstrates the power of ideas in literature in an oppressive regime (think "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seanstress"). Nafisi is a western educated professor of English literature, who returns to Iran from the US and tries for a long time to live within the confines of the Iranian system. She is persuaded to teach at university and seems to have friends in high places who protect her even as her class explores ideas that aren't orthodox by the standards of the religious government. One senses she grew up in an influential and privileged family, but she doesn't provide much detail on her past. She does tell us of her days as a student activist, though, which she now sees as naively agitating for change without considering what would replace the Shah's government.
Finding the environment too difficult, Nafisi finally stops teaching and forms a private class of favorite students, who meet in her home weekly to discuss what she used to teach publicly. The class quickly becomes much more than that, as the personal and political color all they discuss. The group finds parallels (some rather unlikely I thought) between famous heroines--Daisy Miller, Elizabeth Bennett, Lolita--and their own struggles. Nafisi uses "Gatsby" as a window on American culture, the love of money, the seductive and destructive nature of the "American Dream." We see the divisions in the group itself, as one member wants to work within the system for her country and another dangerously flaunts traditional ways. The details of dress and behavior are fascinating--under their robes, these women wear jeans and T-shirts, Nike's and big earrings; letting a strand of hair escape from the veil becomes a political statement.
Interspersed throughout is a lot of heavy literary criticism--it made me want ot read some of these classics again, but at the same time I was a bit lost during discussions of books I missed in college.
Nafisi doesn't delve into her religious background and one senses she had a secular upbringing, but she sees the religious government as a tragedy for Islam. Just as Christianity has in the past been hijacked by those seeking political power, an excuse for war, or to cover up wrongdoing, so too is Islam being hijacked by men with a political agenda. This is a worthwhile and very timely book for those seeking a more sophisticated understanding of the Islamic world.
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Summary: Best literature review I've ever read
Review: This book is an interesting look into the life of women and academics in Iran during their revolution. Nafisi uses an interesting mix of national news and anecdotes from her own and her students' lives, demonstrating how they all intertwine. It's also quite fascinating to read about all this from the point of view of books the author has taught. I had only read about half of the literature she discussed, and having that previous experience certainly enhanced the book for me, but I also think the book is readable without having read Lolita and James and The Great Gatsby, etc. Very enjoyable
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Summary: For Bookworms and Political Savants
Review: Azar Nafisi demonstrates in this book that she is a woman of great intellect, writing ability, compassion, passion for her country and her religion. Above all, she has great passion for great literature and what it can teach us about life (though not as a blueprint). She also has great passion against the things that get in the way of all this. So when she returned to her native Iran after thirteen years spent getting her education in America, she was both coming home, and going into exile, because the forces of tyranny were about to take over Iran. Teaching English Literature at the University of Tehran was the epitome of what she had earned her PhD for, and when she started, things were "liberal" enough that life within the university was possible, though some individuals and rules made it difficult. She was hopeful herself that the 1979 Revolution would improve life for ordinary Iranians, and she joined demonstrations herself for a time. Then things began to get out of hand, and when she was ordered to wear the veil in class, she resigned. Life got more difficult when the Iraqis began the 1980-1989 war. She later taught at two other universities in Tehran. Later, she collected seven women students from among these classes, to put together her secret dream class to study western literature. Her descriptions of the classroom, the way the male students took over, the "trial" of "The Great Gatsby", her analyses of the books, were wonderfully descriptive. I loved her weaving into those descriptions the discussions she later had with her "girls" about the books. These caused the only problem I had with the book, however, as sorting out the chronology was sometimes difficult. After a while, I gave up and just went with the flow, because the flow was so wonderful. One reason I loved the book was that all the books she discussed at length were familiar to me to some degree--I was an English major 35 years ago. I am in the middle of rereading "Lolita" for my book club. Her "take" on this and all the books is so different from anything I've ever thought of or read. Of course that comes from their entirely different setting, even though she stresses the universality of great literature. So these analytical parts were for me both eyeopening and heartbreaking. I also appreciated the book for all the information it gave on the war between Iran and Iraq, which never made any sense to me. Not that it made any political sense to her--Saddam just started it one day. But she was able to make sense for me of the political divisions within Iran, and why factions appeared which were pro-American and anti-American. It also helped me understand more fully the difference between conservative Muslims like Mashid who weren't interested in politics at all and the fundamentalist Islamists like those who tried to take over her classes and could not handle ambiguity at all. And they were the educated ones. Then there were the illiterate ones, who were called students, but were rounded up to storm the US embassy. So the book helped me understand the deep importance of the Muslim faith, and how for a small minority, that gets out of hand, with terrible repurcussions for individual countries and other countries they deal with. If the American government had a better sense of the complexity of all this, we'd all be better off. That's probably not among the reasons Nafisi wrote the book, but it's one of the things I got out of it. I was disappointed not to find more books by her. Is the Nabokov book available in English? I know she published it in Iran. I await whatever else she writes.
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Summary: The redemptive power of books
Review: A wonderful reading experience that illuminates the redemptive and subversive power of books and reading in a totalitarian society. I was struck by the parallels between the distortions of the Soviet system and that of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In each, it was-is absolutely necessary to control what people read as a way of controlling what they think. Nafisi's memoir gives us reason to believe that while governments can coerce people's outward behavior, it is increasingly and refreshingly difficult to prevent them from reading and thinking freely ... and drawing the obvious conclusions about the mendacity and hypocrisy of the "party line."
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Summary: imprisoning lolita
Review: A well-written book with a fascinating way to weave books and people together. But in narrowly interpreting a complicated literary work like ¡§Lolita¡¨ as nothing more than a man¡¦s confiscation of a girl¡¦s life to fulfill his lost dream or ignoring the darkness of ¡§Washington Square¡¨ by unduly praising Catherine Sloper¡¦s courage, Nafisi¡¦s readings demonstrated a hidden casualty brought about by an authoritarian government -- in desperately defying the oppression, a liberal-minded literary scholar of impeccable literary taste would voluntarily and obliviously reduce the rich literary works to fit the simple-minded framework of ¡§autonomy vs. control¡¨or¡§oppressor vs. oppressed¡¨, and in protesting the narrow-minded rejection of Western literary works by the Fundamentalists purely on the ground of morality, Nafisi, in her dissident mode of reading, ironically has also narrow-mindedly ¡§confiscated¡¨ the rich multiplicity of the literary works in question.
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