Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

If you’ve ever questioned the value of literature--particularly of fiction--to transform and inspire, you’ve only to read this memoir by a talented Iranian woman, a professor of Western literature. Nafisi’s university classrooms during the chaotic years of the Iranian revolution were filled with young people defined by their various “-isms.” They seemed to be more like political battlegrounds than places of learning and discovery. Finally, in 1995, Dr. Nafisi came to the realization that she no longer could function within the strictures imposed by the Islamic Republic, not only the punitive dress requirements for women but also the demands to screen all literature through the prism of Islamic fundamentalism and its moral code. Leaving the halls of academia, she chose from among her students seven women who shared her fondness for Western literature to meet in her home one morning a week to discuss assigned readings. As Nafisi and her “girls” studied their favorite authors--among them Jane Austen, Flaubert, Henry James, and, of course, Nabokov--they also came to better understand the society in which they lived and their own individual hopes and needs. Of particular poignancy was the wrenching decision by the Nafisis and a few of the students to leave their homeland. The many strands of this beautifully written memoir come together flawlessly. The reader comes away with a better understanding of 20th-century Iranian history and several great works of Western literature, along with a detailed portrait of seven unique Iranian women and their remarkable teacher.