by Jon Herrera

Reading Lolita in Tehran

ReadingLolitainTehran

As a soulless Imperialist swine who believes in Capitalism and the rights of young women to wear t-shirts and jeans in public, I found Reading Lolita in Tehran an intriguing book.  It tells the surprising story of Intellectuals living in Iran in the years after The Revolution.  Odd, my only thoughts on the people who stayed in Iran after Ayatollah Khomeini took over was that they were all fundamentalist nutcases with no brains at all.

At the very onset Azar Nafisi says that she changed names and combined characters in order to protect the people she talks about in her story.  These are mostly young women who are forced to wear headscarves and obey the whims of any male who feels like telling them to do something.  They live in fear of the secret police and get used to the idea of living double or triple lives-they all wear colorful clothes under their dark and drab public attire.

Among the more interesting characters is a fellow the author calls her Magician, a man who knows a great deal about life and literature and acts as Azar’s little voice of reason from time to time.  He helps her to deal with the challenges of living in Iran after the revolution and also convinces her that she should leave Iran.  When she does decide to leave, he is not happy and tells her that he will never have contact with her again.  He does this with everyone who leaves Iran.  Azar ponders near the end of Reading Lolita in Tehran if he ever existed-or if she ever existed.

Just as every German was not a Nazi, the point of Reading Lolita in Tehran is that most of the normal people who live in Iran are not fundamentalist zealots who burn American flags for fun and think all women should wear burkas.  Our heroes are normal people living in an abnormal world and doing they best they can to get by.  At one point they talk about how much better off they are than people living in nearby countries that treat their women even worse.  Many of the women decide to leave Iran, one of them sneaks across the border because she can’t legally escape Iran.  Among the many stories of Iran are tales of writers and artists who are taken out and killed and their bodies dumped in empty streets.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Booksis an interesting read.  Azar does come across as a bit of a snob at times, and this makes sense since she spends most of her time teaching classical English and American literature to college age students.  The writing is easy to read and the occasional use of an odd word is woven into the overall classroom experience.  Basically, it does bring out the Imperialist in me-if we’re too nice to kill off all the idiots running Iran, we should at least help everyone who wants to leave get out.

Jon Herrera
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Published by Jon Herrera

Writer, Photographer, Blogger.

3 Replies on “Reading Lolita in Tehran”

  1. Very off topic: I finally stumbled upon “Against All Things Ending” on a discount table at a supercenter with almost no book selection, of all things. I’ve been looking for it, but have been in no hurry considering your lackluster review of it and the 3.2 stars at the Amazon site. I will start this one soon…

  2. Yeah, I’ve seen it at Dollar Tree a couple of times-and it’s over priced at that.

    I really wanted to like the whole new series, but it just didn’t turn out that way.

    I thought about reading it again, but the very idea brought a darkness and dreary cloud upon my mind-so I decided not to.