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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
So good. I kept a journal of lines that I liked and ended up writing down basically half the book. Definitely an important read.
I enjoyed this as I had read most of the literary works she discusses throughout this book. I think it would not be an easy read for someone who was not a Nabokov, Austen, or Fitzgerald fan.
Reading Lolita in Tehran promises to show life during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. I was hesitant to read this book because many friends have mentioned that they either 1) own the book but have not read it or 2) have started the book but stopped due to disinterest. Reviews of the novel have similar messages. I went into the novel on the fence, and told myself it might be different because I am an English major. In fact, the only parts of the novel I relatively enjoyed were the literary analysis portions.
The other parts of the novel were a negative, jarring account of living life in Iran, and this was excruciatingly difficult to read especially during the Iraq war portions of the book. It felt overwhelming and heavy. Those who want to learn about life in Iran at this time should not look to this memoir as their source of information because it constantly blurs Islam - the religion - with the government's *backwards, tyrannical, and inaccurate* use of Islam to rule. One small example is the incessant use of the veil as a metaphor, that once the women took off their 'veils,' another 'veil' came down. The tropes Nafisi partakes in replicate orientalist views that the West has, viewing places like Iran and people who practice Islam as backwards and uncivilized.
To anyone who has read this book or simply wants to understand truly why this book bothered me so much, I recommend them to read the article "Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran," of which I have quoted a good conclusive statement below that sums up the problem of Nafisi:
"She is an oriental woman who has been enlightened by western thought and culture, thus she is an authority on the backward and barbaric land that she has left behind." (Seyed Mohammed Marandi, University of Tehran, Iran)
The other parts of the novel were a negative, jarring account of living life in Iran, and this was excruciatingly difficult to read especially during the Iraq war portions of the book. It felt overwhelming and heavy. Those who want to learn about life in Iran at this time should not look to this memoir as their source of information because it constantly blurs Islam - the religion - with the government's *backwards, tyrannical, and inaccurate* use of Islam to rule. One small example is the incessant use of the veil as a metaphor, that once the women took off their 'veils,' another 'veil' came down. The tropes Nafisi partakes in replicate orientalist views that the West has, viewing places like Iran and people who practice Islam as backwards and uncivilized.
To anyone who has read this book or simply wants to understand truly why this book bothered me so much, I recommend them to read the article "Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran," of which I have quoted a good conclusive statement below that sums up the problem of Nafisi:
"She is an oriental woman who has been enlightened by western thought and culture, thus she is an authority on the backward and barbaric land that she has left behind." (Seyed Mohammed Marandi, University of Tehran, Iran)
DNF @100p
Can't hold my attention. Would appreciate it more if I read all of the classics and cared about the ones I've read.
Can't hold my attention. Would appreciate it more if I read all of the classics and cared about the ones I've read.
This book did not live up to its promise. It purported to be a group of women in Iran forming a book group to be able to escape the restrictions of the regime, if only through fiction. It started off as this, but then veered off and became a wildly self-pitying, self-indulgent claptrap. As the "magician" quite rightly pointed out - the author blamed the Republic of Iran for everything, and it got rather tedious I'm afraid. If it had focussed on the books a bit more, and looked at different ways of viewing them, as it did in the first section with Lolita, this would have been a wonderful book. It just wasn't.
I absolutely loved this. It did take me a long time to finish since it was very dense, but it was JUST my speed--reflections on life through books, philosophical asides, and an extremely atmospheric setting. All around excellent
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
So proud of myself for finishing this and slogging through the beginning. It's a shame that parts of the book are written, at best, with the tone and style a well written graduate school English Lit. paper. Strangely, or perhaps intentionally, the story of the "girls" and the books is less interesting than what's happening around them.