Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

This is a memoir about Dr. Nafisi’s experience teaching literature in the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979-1997). In addition to teaching at the university (as it was being overrun by Islamic fundamentalists), she secretly gathered with a small group of women in her home to teach them works from “forbidden” western authors (Austen, James, Fitzgerald, and Nabokov). The academic portions of this book would probably only appeal to pompous English teachers (my colleagues – not me, though I did enjoy her comparisons of Bronte and Austen, chortle chortle). Everyone can glean something from her descriptions of life under Islamic law, especially women. (At times it seemed like it would be be better to be a dog in Iran than to be a woman.) I definitely came away with a renewed appreciation for the freedom we have here in the states. Favorite Quote: “[Khomeini] had been a conscious mythmaker, and he had turned himself into a myth. . . . Like all great mythmakers, he had tried to fashion reality out of his dream, and in the end, . . . he managed to destroy both reality and his dream.”