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Dewey Decimal Number: 920 EAN: 9780007743957 ISBN: 0007178484 Label: Fourth Estate Manufacturer: Fourth Estate Number Of Pages: 368 Publication Date: February 02, 2004 Publisher: Fourth Estate Studio: Fourth Estate Editorial Review: Product Description: When Azar Nafisi was fired from Tehran University (where she was teaching English literature) because she refused to wear a veil, she gathered a group of her female students and resumed her classes at home, privately and discreetly. There, a group of young women discussed, argued about and communed with Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Henry James, Nabokov and others in the canon of English writers. The surreal picture of reading "Lolita", weighing the sexuality of Jane Austen or the American authenticity of Gatsby in the severe aftermath of Iran's Islamic Revolution was not lost on either Nafisi or her students. The young women themselves represented a range of types and as we meet each of these students we enter their lives, investigate their backgrounds and receive an interesting insight into life in contemporary Iran. Average Rating:
 Rating: - OverwhelmingI honestly don't know where to begin an attempt to review READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN. Maybe I'll just give my main impressions in bullet points. 1) The book was more literary criticism than memoir, and I frequently had to rummage through my shelves to re-acquaint my poor memory with the novel she was currently discussing. I can't say I agreed with all of her literary analyses, but it was very thought-provoking. 2) The descriptions of everyday life in Tehran were deeply moving ... Read More Rating:  - "Everyday life.......a battleground...."Imagine...Having to hide a satellite dish for fear of being arrested and thrown in prison,having to hide your face with a veil,your body with a robe,your head with a scarf,and God help you if a couple of loose strands of hair are sticking out. Imagine living under such a strict regime that a woman can not walk down the street with a man who is not her husband,father or brother,of having to scramble to different tables in a restaurant where a raid is going on, if you are sitting with a man who is just a ... Read More Rating:  - Much overrated touching yet incoherent bookNafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran" has gotten much (in my opinion too much) attention over the past four years. She focuses mainly on how she had a book group, composed mainly of her university students, to discuss works of literature, mainly English language classics involving sexual relationships. I find her insights on these works intriguing, and also was intrigued by the descriptions of life in Iran during the Revolution, war with Iraq, and post-Khomeini. However, she appears to view herself as ... Read More Rating:  - At the risk of lowering my Amazon.com rating...(Note: For some reason every time I have to write a one or two star review, folks who loved the book seem to come out of the woodwork to vote that my review wasn't helpful thus lowering my Amazon.com ranking. I have a hard time believing that only my negative reviews are poorly written. I firmly believe that reviews should cover all opinions and not just serve as love fests, thus, here is my barely one-star review for "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Vote away.) It is truly beyond me how this book ... Read More Rating:  - Intriguing, but not very believeableI liked this book, to a certain extent. It's very interesting (eye-opening) to get a glimpse of Iran during during such turmoil - especially how difficult it was for a woman! But the author seems a bit more removed from the actual tension and violence than the reader is led to believe, in my humble opinion. Perhaps that's because she was at the university and therefore was somewhat sheltered. I mean, how could the local authorities not discover the ladies' meetings when the brother of one of Azar's friends ... Read More |
