Reading Lolita in Tehran

I'm way behind in my book posts but will try to get up to speed again. It's not that I haven't been reading. I just haven't been writing--about books. Too many blogs; not enough time!

Reading Lolita in Tehran would have been interesting a few years ago, but given the war in Iraq right now, it is very timely. I was in high school during the time period this book begins its story. I knew the basic outline of what went on, I thought. But I now realize I knew almost nothing. I was unaware of the competing factions, unaware of what it must have been like to live there, to have gone from one end of the spectrum to another. It is more eerie than The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, being true. But echoes of the fiction keep sounding in the memoir. And even more eerie is the fact that I hear echoes of both in the present day here in the U.S.

Azar Nafisi spent college time here in the states, then returned home to Tehran, eager to teach and eager to be home again. And gathers 7 former female students each week into her home to continue their discussions of literature, of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, A Thousand and One Nights, and many more. The literary criticism is interesting and informative, but presenting it as the fundamentalists are taking over the universities makes a fascinating parallel track of ideas.