Reading Lolita in Tehran

سألت إحدى قارئات تلك السيرة لم اعطيتيه نجمة واحدة قالت بسبب الملل

لم أجد مللاً قط فيه بل روح نقية تسري داخل الكتاب
و وصف مستفيض أحبه بلغة جميلة

في وصف جلسات البنات و حكاياهن عن الروايات
و في نقد آذر لبعض الروايات كلوليتا و دعوة لقطع العنق لنابوكوف و غاتشبي العظيم لفيتزجيرالد و ديزي ميللر و ميدان واشنطن لهنري جيمس و روايات اوستن

لم تقتصر السيرة على الأدب فقط بل على الحياة في ايران
استطاعت آذر أن تمزج بين الأدب و الجمهورية الاسلامية

قلقت بعض الشئ من آذر كونها متحررة كثيرًا
و أنها من الممكن أن تكون قد صورت بعض مما حدث من اعتقالات و اعدام بصورة مبالغ فيها !
و خصوصًا أنها ترى أشياء يمكن السماح بها
لا أراها هكذا كأكل لحم الهام "الخنزير" و شرب الخمر
و كونها بالأصل لا ترتدي الحجاب

لكن فهمت من ثنايا الكتاب
ان الحياة في أجواء مثل تلك يجعل الكل واحد !
الكل خائف
حتى المتدينين أنفسهم لان الجمهورية
لم تكن تريد الشريعة بقدر ما تريد الاستبداد باسم الشريعة

أفكار نفيسي يمكن أن تكون مختلفة عني بقدر كبير و لكن
حينما أراها كأديبة أنسى كل ذلك الاختلاف

أعتقد أن الكتاب كان تنفيس لغضب آذر
لم تكن تولول في الكتاب او تزعق

بل كانت الى حد ما نبرتها هادئة و متسامحة

و كما قالت : حينما سأكتب عن كل ذلك .. ربما أكون أكثر تسامحًا و أقل غضبًا...

وكما لامت الجمهورية الاسلامية لامت المعارضة بتفرقها !

وصفت آذر بعض مشاهد السجن و المظاهرات و القهر الحاصل هناك
و على الرغم من اختلاف المشاهد بيننا و بين ايران
الا ان طريقة التفكير واحدة !

حكت آذر عن أحد الشخصيات المرشحة و أنها رأت لافتة مكتوب عليها : إيران تقع في الحب مرة أخرى !! المقصود بها المرشح

لؤلؤة السيرة كانت في جلسات طالبات آذر معها و الحكايا
و أوقات الراحة المسموح فيها بالثرثرة
و التي اتسعت مع مرور الوقت و مع معرفتهن أكثر ببعض
كانت نفيسي طيلة الكتاب تطلق عليهم كلمة "بناتي" :)
أحببت الكلمة

لم أنس محاكمة غاتسبي بالمحاضرة الفكرة التي ابتدعتها آذر محاكاة لما يحدث بالواقع من محاكمات
و السجال ما بين دفاع عن الرواية و اتهام الرواية

لم أجد كتاب أكثر متعةو تمرد و ألم منه
حين تتلاقى عينيّ مع أحداث مشابهة ولو من بعيد مع واقعي
أو حينما أحدث نفسي ب : آذر تقصدني أنا بتلك الجملة

و الغصة الدائمة بالحلق معظم أوقات الرواية !!

كم وددت لو أجلس هناك ببيتها و ظهري لجبال طهران البعيدة و التي أراها بالمرآة المقابلة لي و بيدي كوب قهوة تركية من يد نزهت نفيسي والدة آذر

Cât înseamnă definitiv, e prea mult sau e doar mâinele de care ne temem?
Am recitit o carte despre marile opere, o analiză psihologică a câtorva dintre romanele controversate ale lui Nabokov, Flaubert, Henry James, Fitzgerald.
Azar Nafisi este vocea introspectivă, este alter-egoul romanului într-un flux al conștiinței desprins unitar din romanele pe care le citește în fiecare joi cu studentele sale de la Litere.
Să fii studentă în Teheran? Este nelegitim și prost văzut de bărbați, o femei nu trebuie să citească cărți, mai ales cărți controversate, despre cărți de dragoste nici nu ar fi vorba.
Lolita lui Nabokov este interzisă în Iran, Domna Bovary este anatema regimului islamic, cum să citești și sa analizezi așa ceva? Să îl întorci pe toate fețele pe Humbert criminalul din Lolita, pe ascuns, la o masă literară în care studentele numai poartă nici niqāb, ci blugi pe dedesubt și ruj roșu pe buze. Studentele se mai delectează cu cafele în timul discuție, băutură interzisă femeilor în Islam. Este o răzvrtire, o subvenție de la regulă.
Cât de neîncăpător e încă drumul spre luminița din fața zidului?
Azar Nafisi încearcă analiza marilor opere literare ca: Marele Gatsby, Lolita, Mândrie și prejudecată, din perspectiva critica a regimului, sub cupola sufocanta a cărei se află în anii ‘80 la Universitate din Theran.
Gatsby și Lolita, Daisy Miller sau Cicinnatus din Invitație la Eșafod a lui Nabokov sunt doar niște marionete nefericite, unelte ale unui experiment diabolic așa cum este și statul femei din Teheran.
Totul trebuie acoperit de voal, orice de urmă de senzualitate-pedepsita, biciuita până la sânge sau chiar până la moarte. Orice strigăt mut încătușat, acoperit cu smoala,tencuit după straturi groase de zid.
Victimele reprezinta doar o posesie bolnăvicioasa pentru agresor. La fel cum ticălosul de Humbert o distruge pe copila Lolita. Sau cum marele vis american îl ucide pe Gatsby, banala răceală a eroinei lui Henry James, Daisy Miller care moare după o plimbare spre libertate.
Toate acestea sunt exemple clare, placide. Demonstrații fictive doar ale unei realități crunte.
Scopul lui Azar Nafisi în Citind Lolita în Teheran nu este de a-și scrie memoriile sub un voal autobiografic. Nu este o carte memorialistica despre exilul islamic sau despre viscitudinile aplicate femeilor. Pentru că asta noi știm deja.
Carte lui Azar evidențiază, în primul rând, statul femei-didact în sfera ciclului de învățământ superior, toate confruntările și obstacolele unei lupte aprige cu regimul advers.
Literatura este o forma de evadare din acest prezent nesigur, pentru că gândirea liberă nu pătimeste niciodată, este unica luminița aprinsă de la capătul întunericului.
Am citit cartea a doua oară, după ani buni, a fost o gură de aer proaspăt de la începutul zorilor, iar zorii adevărați se desăvârșesc doar prin prisma eliberării din sine însuți…

fantabulous.
A must read for anyone who loves literature. Nafisi narrates her ordeals as an English university teacher in the clerical ruled Iran of 80 ' s and 90's. She also charters the reader (along with her secret students) through her various beloved novels and authors. Though I didn't understand each and every aspect of what she said, I immensely enjoyed reading this book.
This surely deserves a second, thorough read, but after some time, after finishing all the literary works she has mentioned here, and after reading up the political history of Iran.
This is a must - read for anyone who loves English literature.

Sometimes we treat books as just a thing to be consumed and cast aside. Sometimes enjoyed or disdained. Avid readers will have their favorites or those they loathe and defend their positions against all comers. Nafasi’s book, however, reminds us that books can be lifelines, much more central to who we are and how we live, how we struggle to make a life and find meaning with and in it. She has given us a memoir of living through the revolution in Iran and its long war with Iraq, as a woman and an intellectual, both reviled or repressed demographics of the Islamic state that emerged from the ashes of the Shah’s overthrow and the rise of the clerics. Through such times and against such odds, she shows us how fiction transcends time and place and culture to show us the human, the real and the important. She reminds us that opposition to ambiguity reflects a fanaticism against being open to or uneasy with complexities in the human condition I , but this questioning or search for meaning can’t be fully suppressed even under the most ruthless suppression.

Within the pages she critiques authors and books I love and hate and gave me deeper appreciation of both. Her metaphor for Pride and Prejudice as a dance was lovely and I’ll carry it with me. Her struggle to teach and impart the joys of fiction remind us to appreciate the freedoms we have to partake in the creative and intellectual life, to commune with writers who have given us the books that show who we are as humans in all our maddening complexity.

I really appreciate what Nafisi has given us.

I'm utterly and absolutely in love with this book. It is a contemporary masterpiece, the kind that deserves to be called a classic upon publication. Reading Lolita in Tehran is such a rare mix of extraordinary philosophical writing, academic literature essays, national history and personal memoir, that it deserves to be called 'one of a kind'. Truth be told, I can think of a similar novel by one Croatian professor of literature (you wouldn't have heard of him), who has been just as successful in merging philosophy, literary criticism and memoir in his novel Tara, yet his story is obviously different because it is told from a point of view of a woman, a lady academic. “Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books


Speaking of literary critics and professors, have you ever noticed how only a few literature professors become writers themselves? There are exceptions, but studying and teaching literature at an university level is a demanding job. It is the kind of job where you spend a lot of creative energy. As Orwell said, it is hard to imagine someone teaching all day then sitting down to work on a book. Teaching is one of the most creative jobs out there (if you do it right). You constantly have to reinvent yourself, update your teaching methods and adjust your classes to your student's needs. Speaking of teachers, I did find Nafisi's teaching recollections fascinating.

This book works quite well as a mixed genre. I feel like the only review that would be worthy of such a novel would be a book itself, preferably one as intelligently and poetically written as Reading Lollita in Tehran. It was hard to tell what I found more fascinating about this book, the modern political history of Iran, the moral dilemma of wearing a veil or being forced to abandon teaching, the nearly impossible challenge of keeping high academic standards in a militant Islamic Republic, amazing literary essays or Nafisi's personal memories( and within them hidden the tales of her students and family members). Nafisi tells her tale from a distinctly female point of view. Most of the characters in the book are Iranian women, and I feel that this book is first and foremost about them, about what it means to be a women in Iran. There are some important male characters that feature in Nafisi's novel as well, such as the magician and her husband, but I think the author intended to give the voice to all the Iranian women, a voice that has been taken from them.

I wondered about how Iranian women must have felt a number of times. This book gave me some answers. They are not easy answers, but they deserve to be heard. Many of us who have seen the photographs of Iran from the seventies and the eighties find it heard to connect them with present day Iran. The photographs of beautiful young woman walking in perfectly maintained parks wearing flare jeans, mini skirts and T-shirts. What it was like for those women to see their daughters and granddaughter publicly beaten and lashed because a strain of hair escaped their veil?

“These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

There is only one thing in which I disagree with Nafisi. When she says: " It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them." I wouldn't agree that it is not only through literature that one can learn to emphasize with others. There are other ways, not necessarily connected with reading. Art exists in many mediums, and literature is not the only way to express the complexities of our human hearts. Nevertheless, Nafisi is right in pinpointing the reason why totalitarian regimes hate good literature. Moreover, she is absolutely correct in describing the power of literature. No wonder that the totalitarian regimes hate literature so much. Good literature has the potential of making us better individuals. In that sense, books are truly magic.


Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.

If you examine the full title of this book carefully, you can get an idea of what this book is about. It's indeed a book about the reading experience in Tehran. It is about studying, reading and teaching Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and etc under the totalitarian regime. It's about reading in general and what it means to be a reader. It is a memoir in books, because books are an essential part of it. But it is also so much more. A book about what it is to be human, that answers the question about why do we need art and literature in the first place. It is as educating as it is touching. I don't remember when I have last been so deeply touched by a novel. It's absolutely a masterpiece. A must read for lovers of literature.

*4.5*

You will either hate or love Nabokov, Austen, and James after reading this book. Or curiosity will make you revisit their work, like it made me. At a time when I have Austen's novels lined up to read, this book was handy.

Nafisi is an academic--"too much of an academic" she says, one who believes that you don't just read about people like you, instead you read to learn about people unlike you (can we have more professors of literature like her?). It shows in this beautiful memoir on literature in the time of censorship. Nafisii left Iran when she was thirteen, to live in England, Switzerland, and America. She returned at thirty to teach at an Iranian university, when Sharia laws had replaced the regular laws and young Iranian women were in a worse place than their mothers' generations. She tells a lot here about the Iran-Iraq war, the curfew, dress code, and restrictions placed on women (they couldn't even sit at a certain part of a restaurant if unaccompanied by a male and a woman not related to a man was not allowed to sit with him at all).

When Nafisi decides to host a comparative literature bookclub-like-class from her home for a few literature lovers, she learns just how much books are liberating to the group. They share a lot of intimate discussions over books like "The Great Gatsby," "Pride and Prejudice," "Lolita," "Daisy Miller," "Gone With the Wind," "Tender is the Night," "The Scarlet Letter"...I could go on and on. Their conversations during these discussions are the highlight of the book.

One thing is certain, this book will have you reading more books. If you don't like comparative literature discussions though, it may bore you at times because it is a book on books. Separated into four parts, Nafisi discusses the war, the university, her students, and books. You only get glimpses into her life and thoughts (a bit about her husband and children) at times the book reads like the old form of biography. There are sections where she meets with a male friend she calls her "magician" but for a memoir, it seems so elusive that you're not sure what story she is really trying to tell about him--except that her magician loves books, he is her mentor, and he is an exile within his own country.

For this book geek though, this book will have a special place on my shelf and in my heart.

"They love this class, she said. They even learned to love Catherine Sloper, though she isn't pretty and lacks everything they look for in a heroine. I said, in these revolutionary times it's hardly surprising that students wouldn't care much about the trials and tribulations of a plain, rich American girl at the end of the nineteenth century. But she protested vehemently. In these revolutionary times, she said, they care even more. I don't know why people who are better off always think that those less fortunate than themselves don't want to have the good things--that they don't want to listen to good music, eat good food or read Henry James."

Cinque stelle e aggiungerei pure la cometa.

Davvero una bellissima lettura. I due cardini del libro sono la storia recente dell'Iran e l'amore per la letteratura. Attraverso il suo lavoro di docente, Nafisi ci racconta di quanto siano sovversivi i grandi romanzi e non tanto per le storie che raccontano; ciò che rende la letteratura democratica sono la sua potenza immaginativa e la sua capacità di destare emozioni. L'immaginazione è la principale nemica del potere; non a caso, tutte le dittature cercano di manipolare l'immaginario collettivo e di limitare la manifestazione delle emozioni. In un paese in cui l'espressione della vita pubblica si traduce in una bugia, la letteratura diventa un mezzo per riappropriarsi della realtà. Le analisi su Nabokov, James, Fitzgerald, Austen sono interessantissime e ho pensato che sarebbe meraviglioso avere Azar Nafisi come insegnante! Ancora più bello è il modo in cui l'autrice riesce a mescolare i racconti delle letture con quelli delle sue studentesse, rendendo il libro vivo e pulsante. Se Nafisi è un'ottima docente, le ragazze di cui racconta sono comunissime e diversissime l'una dall'altra. Le loro non sono storie di resistenza, ma di sopravvivenza; la loro lotta per la vita, anche se in forme diverse, ci accomuna tutti e le rende nel modo più semplice possibile nostre amiche e sorelle.