Book Review
Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Author: Azar Nafisi
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Date: December 30, 2003
ISBN: 978-0812971064
Nafisi’s book is a biographical reflection mostly upon her experiences teaching Western literature (the modern novel) in Tehran, Iran, before, during, and after the 1979 revolution. In addition, several chapters recount the actual events of the revolution happening in and around the University of Tehran, where she was a professor (Ph.D. American literature, University of Oklahoma).
The narrative pattern weaves together insights from the literature she taught in the classroom, with social upheaval happening around the university. We see behind the scenes into individual experiences of Nafisi and her students during those pivotal years of 1979-1981, as the future of Iran was being sorted out. The sorting out process was sometimes violent and bloody in the streets, constantly argued in the universities, and fought for in the halls of power.
Nafisi includes conversations with students comparing meaning in the novels with the meaning of the social changes happening around them. One of the key functions of literature, Nafisi says (and many others have said), is that it helps people put themselves in someone else’s shoes. This was a big issue among the many competing groups vying for influence when the revolution was in progress, and no one yet knew what the future government would look like. Much of the book explores these competing meanings and influences.
Some of the novels that feature in Nafisi’s life and in the book include Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, James’ Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and the Ambassadors, Nabokov’s Lolita, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, among others.
There is an interesting episode where the classroom is converted to a courtroom, and Great Gatsby is put on a mock-trial for its moral integrity. Students are assigned to roles such as judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and all participated in the questioning. No verdict was reached, but the exercise provoked a lot of thought and debate. Nafisi considered it a success, despite the lack of a verdict.
Nafisi was dismissed from the University of Tehran in 1981, but years later was invited to teach at Allameh Tabataba’I University. In one poignant moment, a former student re-appears seven years later, and rejoins Nafisi’s literature class in the new setting. Nafisi learns that the last time she saw some of her students, was the day many of them were put in jail for several years, and learned that one had been executed. Ultimately, Nafisi was expelled from Allameh Tabataba’I University as well. Actually she resigned, but her resignation was denied, but then she was expelled. The end result was that she left the school.
The 1980s feature her professorial life, her relationships with students and friends, but the backdrop of this decade was the steady bombardment from missile strikes as the Iran-Iraq war dragged on for many years.
Nafisi began to feel irrelevant as her expertise were devalued, her services as a professor no longer wanted. She wrote to an American friend, being irrelevant is like visiting your old house, wandering into your old family room, where your book-filled bookcases have been replaced with a brand new television set. You are no longer relevant to this house. You’ve become a ghost roaming between the walls, floors, through the doors, but you are not seen and not part of it anymore (169). The feeling is common among older people; however, Nafisi was not very old at the time, and the haunting realization takes on special poignancy in these circumstances. The mood is perfectly captured in the quotation from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the “Burnt Norton” chapter (227–228).
By the 1990s, Nafisi hosted weekly discussions on modern American novels in her home. It included some of her former students, which temporarily filled a void. Ultimately, Nafisi left Iran in 1997. Some of her old friends and students stayed in Iran, others relocated to the US, Canada, England, and Europe. Some pursued their own PhDs, some became teachers and professors.
Looking back on the story, I see a life constantly interrupted, derailed, damaged; but with a drive to find meaning and empathy through the best literature. That is the thread that holds together from her youthful college experience, through Iran’s Islamic Revolution, through the Iran-Iraq war, through many academic, social, and governmental relocations, dislocations, and difficulties. It’s the story of how any life can be more meaningful when reading and learning are at the center and drive the mind onward.