I really would have liked to have seen a lot less "Reading Lolita" and a lot more "in Tehran." I've tried to read this book at least three times over the past three years and each time couldn't muster the energy to plow through it. I think the only reason I made it through this time was because of my long commute and the threat of being due back at the library soon.

As I said above, the parts of the book that dealt with the socio-political landscape of the Islamic Republic of Iran - how it changed so drastically in such a short period of time, how the revolution played out, how the various political decrees affected the lives of women close to the author, how basic rights were chiseled away with little resistance, the various actors at play during the transition between a post-colonial/monarchical ruling body and a theocracy, the role of students in political movements - were absolutely fascinating and, in my view, well-written.

On the other hand, the author is a professor of literature and wanted to write about that...which may or may not interest the reader. Each time I tried to read this book, I felt as though there should have been a required reading list prior to picking up "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Though the author chastises intellectualism for the sake of intellectualism, the book is far from accessible. Furthermore, I felt a bit duped because I felt that the book is marketed as a text exploring the socio-political landscape of Iran (see above) and not a tedious, scholarly literary critique.

Admittedly, I was humbled by the fact that these Iranian students coveted their copies of foreign literature so deeply and I, one who has so many opportunities to read the classics to which they refer (no doubt even cost-free if I comb through the library's dustiest of shelves or inexpensive in paperback), have not read most of them. It did encourage me to add some of the classics cited in the book to my "to-read" list. What it didn't encourage me to do is recommend this book to others without the warning that it is, first and foremost, a academic literary critique.

My full review of Reading Lolita In Tehran is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

On the whole, I didn’t enjoy Reading Lolita In Tehran as I read it, but I don’t think that’s the fault of Nafisi or the book. Rather, I think I went in with the wrong set of expectations – perhaps the fault of misleading marketing or inflated reputation. I thought this memoir would revolve solely around the book club, sketching intimate portraits of its participants and their engagement with the forbidden novels. It’s much broader in scope than that, and much more focused on Nafisi’s own experiences and understanding. Read this one, by all means, but perhaps it’s best to adjust your own expectations accordingly.

After Iran was transformed into an Islamic state, literature professor Azar Nafisi secretly met with seven women students weekly to discuss classic Western works. Many of the literary works acted as vehicles for discussion about the oppression of women, the wearing of the veil, the morality police, human rights, and political prisoners.

It will enhance the reading of Nafisi's book if one is familiar with Nabokov's "Lolita," Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," and James' "Daisy Miller" and "Washington Square." Discussions of these and other classics led to tangents about the situation in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s. The repressive regime made changes at the universities which affected both Nafisi and her students. Each woman was agonizing over the decision whether to leave the country or stay in Iran. The author and her family came to the United States to live in 1997. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is exceptional in many ways--as a memoir, as an experience with great classic literature, and as a window into life in Iran.

Tramite il racconto di un seminario clandestino di letteratura americana, la protagonista Azar Nafisi, racconta uno spaccato della storia del suo paese, l'Iran. Dalla rivoluzione alla guerra con l'Iraq.
Mi ha molto colpita la sensibilità con cui l'autrice tratta la questione femminile, le costrizioni, gli abusi e le violenze che le donne subiscono (dall'obbligo di indossare il velo, ai matrimoni combinati tra bambine e uomini, anche vecchi e molto altro ancora)

Che cosa potrei ancora scrivere di un romanzo del genere?
Leggere Lolita a Teheran è un’ode alla letteratura e alla libertà e proprio per questo ho voluto assaporare ogni singola riga con calma, senza fretta, per assimilare alla perfezione tutti gli insegnamenti contenuti in queste pagine. Azar Nafisi, l’autrice, insegnava letteratura inglese all’università di Teheran, prima di lasciare con sofferenza la sua terra natia e andare ad insegnare negli USA. La sua opera non è solo un resoconto della difficile situazione in Iran subito dopo la rivoluzione di Khomeini, ma è anche un saggio analitico sulla letteratura, una testimonianza della difficile condizione delle donne e sulle problematiche dovute dalla censura e dalla continua distruzione dei romanzi considerati “immorali”. Troverà il suo mondo ideale quando deciderà di istituire un seminario nel suo soggiorno, insieme ad alcune tra le sue più brillanti studentesse, discutendo di Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Henry James e Jane Austen e di come questi autori hanno cambiato il mondo della letteratura.
Qualsiasi recensione potrebbe sminuirne il contenuto, perciò ho solo una raccomandazione: fate un favore a voi stessi e leggete questo romanzo.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a book by Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi. Published in 2003, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for over one hundred weeks and has been translated into 32 languages.

The book consists of a memoir of the author's experiences about returning to Iran during the revolution (1978–1981) and living under the Islamic Republic of Iran government until her departure in 1997.

It narrates her teaching at the University of Tehran after 1979, her refusal to submit to the rule to wear the veil and her subsequent expulsion from the University, life during the Iran–Iraq War, her return to teaching at the University of Allameh Tabatabei (1981), her resignation (1987), the formation of her book club (1995–97), and her decision to emigrate.

Events are interlaced with the stories of book club members consisting of seven of her female students who met weekly at Nafisi's house to discuss works of Western literature, including the controversial Lolita, and the texts are interpreted through the books they read. The book is divided into four sections: "Lolita", "Gatsby", "James", and "Austen".

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه می سال 2005میلادی

عنوان: لولیتا خوانی در تهران؛ در 347ص، به زبان: انگلیسی؛ لندن، فورث استیت، 1383، شابک 0007178484‬؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایرانی تبار ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

کتاب «لولیتاخوانی» در تهران، چهار بخش است؛

بخش نخست: «لولیتا (پرسوناژ رمان لولیتا اثر ولادیمیر نابوکوف)»؛

بخش دوم: «گتسبی (پرسوناژ رمان گتسبی بزرگ اثر اسکات فیتزجرالد)»؛

بخش سوم: «جیمز (هنری جیمز، نویسنده مشهور آمریکایی)»؛

بخش چهارم: «آستن (جین آستن، نویسنده مشهور انگلیسی)».؛

موضوع اصلی کتاب، شرح و واگویی یادمانهای بانو «آذر نفیسی»، از روزهای «انقلاب فرهنگی» در «ایران» است؛ ایشان با تعطیلی کلاس درسش، با بازخوانی رمانهای مشهور، به دانشجویان پیشین خویش، خصوصی تدریس میکنند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 04/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 12/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

I read this for my live bookclub...and if it weren't for that I would not have gotten through it. It was not an easy read by any stretch of the means; I did not truly connect with any of the players. But all of that aside, I am very glad I read this book as it gave me insight into a period of history that I knew fairly little about (I was too engrossed in my own high school and teen life) I'm embarrassed to say. And it also has given me a much clearer understanding of present day relations.

While it took all my determination to get through, I would call this book a 'necessary' read and on that I'm very glad I got through.

From its provoking, intriguing title to its very last page, Azar Nafisi's book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, partly a narrative biography, partly a history of a nation and its people, and partly critical analysis of great American and British authors, is astonishing, enlightening, and important. Much like Marjane Satrapi's amazing graphic novels, Nafisi pulls back the headscarves, the long black robes dictated by the Guardian Council, to show us the modern women of Iran and how they fight to maintain their sense of identity.

Focusing in a large part around the seven students Nafisi convinced to meet in her apartment after quitting her job at the University of Tehran, the book introduces us to each of the young women and gives a thumbnail account of her life and its hardships and its joys. There is an early image in the book when the narrator talks to a painter student of hers about color. Paradise, the painter tells her, the color of her paradise is swimming pool blue. A year after the revolution, her father died, the government confiscated their house which included a big swimming pool where she had trained regularly. My paradise is down at the bottom of that swimming pool, she tells her teacher.

And that in a nutshell is why such a book like Lolita is so meaningful, so powerful in a place like Iran. In a country where young girls can be arrested for eating an apple to lasciviously or for licking ice cream in public, where the very first action upon seizure of power during the Iranian Revolution (before even writing a new constitution) was to lower the age of consent for marriage from eighteen down to nine, a book about a middle aged man who destroys the life of a pubescent girl is all too familiar.

There is much here for fans of Nabokov in general, not just Lolita, but especially (and blackly humorously) An Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov's most Kafkan story. The mindless, impenetrable mysteries of authoritarianism were wonderfully grasped in Kafka and regardless of ideology powering the system they are almost always universally the same. For Nabokov, who lived under such a system in the Soviet Union, or for Nafisi in Iran, the repression in all its brutal absurdity is the same.

Consider that in Iran, under the mullahs, the position of film censor was held by a nearly blind man. It is a curious feature of totalitarian government, as noted by Kundera, that irony is completely and entirely dead among the political class, that the sheer humor to be derived from a blind censor is never apparent. It's black humor is unknown. "Our world under the mullahs' rule," Nafisi writes, "was shaped by the colorless lenses of the blind censor. Not just our reality, but also our fiction had taken on this curious coloration in a world where the censor was the poet's rival in rearranging and shaping reality."

What becomes crystal clear as you listen to Nafisi's narration, is what a radical act reading is, how it is peering into a created world and determining your relation to it, it is an act of discovery that sneaks in self-discovery. To discuss books, to talk with a class about them is to articulate your own thinking, it is to think aloud about nothing less than self-discovery. It is all the more important an act of personal revolution when one lives under a totalitarian regime that would dictate to you your personality and appropriate and inappropriate thoughts and beliefs about the world around you. To then discuss with another person your own intimate creation of a world shared with the author is to create an intimacy with others, it is a connection you make of your innermost self with others' innermost selves, it is a connection of your projected conception of yourself with others' projected conception of theirselves.

It is, in short, nearly the most important thing in human life.

And for repressive forces, it is perhaps the most dangerous rebellion of all. Or as Nabokov puts it, "Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form."

The book's second part is primarily made up of a thumbnail history of the Iranian Revolution in which the author found herself whirled. What's surprising is that even in its shrunken form, the history adds to the complexity of the picture in a way American accounts never seem capable of doing. That the early stages of the Revolution was not primarily religious, but that they came to dominate after factionalism crippled the more secular-minded of the youthful revolutionaries and the communist leaders, was something one rarely hears in accounts here in America.

It is a step back into the past even more so than the first part. Told from America, the book's first part takes place in 1995 after Afisi has quit the University of Tehran; the second part -- a discussion of The Great Gatsby forming its central theme -- takes place when she was still employed there. Managing to avoid the immediate purge of disloyal and impure employees from the university, the author was constantly amidst the fire, her classes challenging not only students’ abilities to analyze texts but also their blinkered views of the world and how everything is filtered through the prism of revolutionary fervor.

This culminates in a mock trial during class in which an intolerant young man as the prosecutor accuses Gatsby of being an immoral work, while a more liberal student defends the novel as its counsel. Nafisi herself sits in the trial as the book itself. In one debate, it is discussed how literature is one of the best ways of learning empathy, of putting yourself in another person's shoes, and in this way we learn how complex people are, how multifaceted and not so black and white. This can be a curb to ruthlessness; thus a moral duty to read ever more complex works; intellectually skimpy novels with black and white caricatures of characters are less likely to assist in the development this moral sense and in fact can retard it.

Nafisi tells in her book's third part, this time discussing Henry James, of how it was during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war. These tempestuous two middle sections contains one of the best glimpses into the human heart of this time is when Nafisi sees the televised confession of an executed military man who had been responsible for her father's imprisonment when she was a child. No matter how much she hated the man and wished for a revenge upon him, his death even, this shaken, shell of a person, repeating the faked confession makes her feel even her own self has been cheapened.

The book's fourth part, as the class turns to Jane Austen, turns its focus on the Islamic Revolution's madness when it comes to women. There are too many absurdities to cover within a short review. The banning of nail polish and makeup, the government mandated wardrobe hiding nearly all outward signs of one’s physique, the absurdity of monstrous sheets hung at beaches to segregate the sexes, not to mention the aforementioned Sharia-based nine year old marriage age. This prompts one class wit to remark, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man with or without a good fortune must be in need of a nine year old virgin wife."

Which is not to say that everyone else is less oppressed. Going to a concert, one of the few frowned upon but grudgingly accepted entertainments, the crowd is reminded not to behave in a non-Islamic way, which is to say they are warned against showing any emotion or enjoyment. Imagine! A concert of wooden faced musicians, denied even the physicality of swaying or tapping their feet, playing the music of The Mambo Kings to a likewise stoic and immobile crowd. Even applause is silenced by the Revolutionary Guards who stand in attendance, ready to crush even the slightest manifestation of enjoyment.

Nevertheless, Nafisi constructs her book so admirably that she turns to society as a reflection of the novels being studied. Thus Henry James' revulsion to WWI is a meditation on the Iran-Iraq war, Gatsby turns on class consciousness and what is the appropriate future of which to dream, and Austen, while dominated by the idea of marriage and male/female relationships, also circles around behavior and its contradictions between private and public.

In hearing her stories, in listening to her disquisitions on what is important in novels, Nafisi reminds you of the best professors you’ve ever had. At turns insightful, funny, sensitive to the larger issues that ripple through an author’s work, and capable of expressing her beliefs directly in ways that challenge her listeners but with great respect, Nafisi has written a book that encapsulates a Great Literature class, an Iranian history class, and a good long chat with a friend. The result is nothing less than mesmerizing.

Documento testimonianza sulla storia della Repubblica Iraniana degli ultimi trent'anni e al contempo atto d'amore e riconoscenza nei confronti del potere salvifico della letteratura.
A scriverla è una docente universitaria che per anni si batte, con dignità e ostinazione, per i diritti delle donne, la libertà di azione e pensiero e la diffusione della letteratura occidentale nel suo paese, un paese devastato da disordini, odi e violenze di ogni genere: istituisce corsi universitari e circoli letterari con le sue studentesse duranti i quali incoraggia alla discussione e alla critica di alcune delle opere di grandi scrittori occidentali (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James e Austen) trovando in esse parellelismi con la storia del suo paese. A dimostrazione che la letteratura può essere quel collant in grado di unire menti, cuori e pensieri diversi nei momenti più improbabili e difficili, aprendo la mente, stimolando il confronto, infondendo la forza di andare avanti nonostante tutto il resto. E' l'apertura verso altri mondi, è evasione, è speranza, è vita.
"Leggere Lolita a Teheran" ha tutti gli attributi per essere definito un gran bel romanzo: testimonia le vicende storiche di un paese arricchendo le proprie conoscenze (sebbene, a tal proposito, a mio avviso richieda già qualche nozione propria di base), ha uno stile raffinato ed evocativo, alterna parti descrittive e dialogate in maniera calibrata. E' un libro che parla di libri, di letture, di donne, di dolori, di storia, ed è terribilmente attuale. Quello che mi è mancato è stato quel "pathos" che si crea nell'intima comunanza fra lettore e libro, quell'emozione data dall'empatia e della partecipazione. Mi ha arricchita ma non mi ha emozionata nè appassionata, insomma, non mi è entrato dentro nonostante il prezioso valore che gli riconosco. E, oltre a ciò ho trovato poca unità e continuità fra le parti che lo compongono, con salti temporali e d'azione che non sempre mi sono risultati chiari (il circolo di studentesse reimpie il primo capitolo poi ritorna nel terzo, non è chiaro se ciò che accade in mezzo sia una digressione o meno). Il risultato complessivo è comunque quello di un romanzo più che buono.

كم أشعرُ بالامتلاء في هذهِ اللحظات، والخفة كذلك..!
هذا الكتابُ توحدَ بي بشدة..
توحد بي عميقاً..
أخذتُ أعيشهُ كما لو أنني إحدى طالباتُ آذر قرب نافذة الغيوم على طاولة الطعام والقهوة التركية المجيدة.!
كيف يمكن لكتابٍ أن يؤلمكَ إلى هذا الحد، ثم يربت على جرحكَ الصغير.!
أن يقسو عليك حتى تستشيظ غضباً، ثم يخلق لكَ أكثر اللحظات حميميةً وتخيلاً.!!

آذر نفيسي،
لقد باتت هذه المرأة أماً روحيةً لا تنفك تهمسُ لي (ألا تخافي).!
تأخذكَ إلى أروقة جامعة طهر��ن (والتي اطلعت عليها حقيقةً عبر برنامج ال قوقل ايرث)، والجماعات الثوروية..
إلى شعارات الخميني وفساد الجمهورية الإسلامية..!
تأخذكَ إلى "معضلة الحرية" في إيران..
إلى ضياع حقوق المرأة بالكامل في تلك البقعة من الأرض..
تأخذكَ إلى الرقص الإيراني، حتى تغويك لتفتح اليوتيوب وتعيش اللحظة المباغتة.. تماما كما فعلت بي.!!
ثم تأخذكَ إلى طالباتها..
أولئكَ اللواتي ستخلقهن بقربكَ كما لو أنك معهن في ذات غرفة الطعام الأليقة..
آذين الجريئة بطلاء أظافرها الأحمر،
مانا الشاعرة الناعمة التي ستبكيك في نهاية الكتاب،
ياسي الراقصة ذات الجسد الممتلئ،
ساناز وميترا ومهشيد ونسرين..
تظن بأنك يجب أن تحفظ كل واحدةٍ كي لا تضيع في الحكاية، لكنك في الواقع ستعيش معهن.!!
سترسم الصور لتلكم النسوة..!
ولتكن عادلاً، فلا تحكم على إخلاقهن لأنهن تحدثن بكل صراحة...
ستصل للحظة، بأن تلتهم الأوراق قراءةً وأنت تشعر بالذنب في سرك عندما تعي بأن الباقي قليل..
قليل جداً

سأكتفي لهذا الحد وأقول، بأن هذا الكتاب صورةٌ بديعةٌ من الأدب، لابد أن (تُعـاش)..
لا تنسوا أكوابَ القهوة المقدسة، حين تهموا بالقراءة..

من هي لوليتا؟وما علاقة لوليتا بطهران؟
لوليتا هي رواية للكاتب الروسي نابوكوف.. طفلة في الثانية عشر من عمرها وتعرضت للأغتصاب والاستغلال علي يد عجوز قذر يسمي هومبرت...
الرواية فيها إسقاط مباشر و ربط لقصة لوليتا بالثورة الإيرانية الإسلامية..
لوليتا هي رمز للشعب الإيراني عموماً وللمرأة الإيرانية خصوصاً..و هومبرت هو آية الله الخميني الذي أراد أن يحول هذا الشعب إلي نماذج من صنع خياله..أراد أن تتحول كل أمرأة من إنسانة حية إلي مخلوق ساكن ومستسلم!

الكاتبة ألقت الضوء علي المعاناة اليومية للشعب الإيراني بسبب القوانين الجديدة والتعليمات التي كان من ضمنها فرض الحجاب ،خفض سن الزواج من ١٨ سنة إلي ٩ سنوات! الرجم العلني كعقوبة لجريمة الزنا بجانب إغلاق العديد من الصحف وصولاً للأعدامات العلنية وقتل السجناء السياسين بل وقتل أيضاً بعض الكُتاب والمفكرين!!!

الكتاب عبارة عن مذكرات شخصية للكاتبة آذر نفيسي وهي أستاذة جامعية في الأدب الإنجليزي و يتضمن تفاصيل بسيطة عن حياتها الشخصية وتفاصيل كثيرة لتلميذاتها وحياتهم اللي مكانش ليها أي فايدة بالنسبة لي إلي جانب جزء كبير جداً من الكتاب عن تحليل الكثير من الكتب الأدبية اللي أنا مقريتش منها أي حاجة و بالتالي كانت غير ممتعة بالمرة..

يعني أقدر أقول انه ٣ كتب في كتاب واحد..تعبني جداً في قراءته وحسيت بتشتت خلال القراءة ومش عشان حجمه الكبير... ولكن هو تناول الكثير من المواضيع و مكتوب بطريقة غير ممتعة بالنسبة لي و لا يوجد به أي نوع من الدفء أو الحميمية..

الكتاب مش وحش أكيد ،الترجمة رائعة .. وطلعت منه بمعلومات كتير جداً عن إيران اللي نفسي أقرأ عنها أكتر كمان..

في نهاية الكتاب سوف تتسائل هل من حق الدول أن تستخدم الدين كأداة لتعزيز السلطة؟ ولو ده حصل..إزاي ممكن إي إنسان يعترض أو يجادل مع ممثل الله علي الأرض؟!
معتقدش أنه ينفع..السكوت والخضوع حيكون أحسن في هذه الحالة وأظن هو دة المطلوب...و مش بس في إيران

La bellezza e l'inferno

[commento a fine lettura]

Se Azar Nafisi, nel 1997, non avesse lasciato definitivamente l'Iran alla volte degli Stati Uniti, probabilmente avremmo sentito parlare anche di lei da Roberto Saviano in quella bellissima puntata speciale di Che Tempo fa andata in onda a novembre; ed è per questo che gli rubo il titolo di un suo libro per quello del mio commento, perché la sua denuncia merita comunque di iscriverla in quella categoria di autori nonostante, e fortunatamente, non abbia pagato con la propria vita o con l'isolamento il suo coraggio: anche se già l'esilio volontario mi sembra una violenza sufficiente.
Potrebbe rientrare a pieno titolo nell'elenco di quegli scrittori e di quei giornalisti, testimoni del proprio tempo, che hanno deciso di mettere la propria sensibilità e la propria capacità di comunicare al servizio della società.



Azar Nafisi, professoressa di Letteratura inglese all'Università di Teheran, decide di farlo attraverso il suo lavoro e la sua passione: l'insegnamento della letteratura inglese e americana, in un'epoca, quella a cavallo con la Rivoluzione islamica nel 1979, in cui invece l'obiettivo degli integralisti è quello di censurare e demonizzare tutto quello che proviene dall'occidente.
Il compito che si prefigge la Nafisi, che organizza un seminario con alcune delle sue migliori allieve tra le mura della sua abitazione, al riparo dagli occhi vigili dei repressori e dei censori, è quello di lasciare alle sue ragazze "una finestra aperta sul mondo".
Lo studio di Nabokov, Austen, Fitzgerald e James e delle loro opere, permetterà più che di "sognare" la libertà di costumi e di pensiero dell'occidente, di analizzare, quasi di sezionare, il carattere e lo spirito interiore dei personaggi che le popolano.



Devo essere sincera, in un testo di tale portata emotiva, perché è innegabile fare un raffronto continuo con le nostre opportunità e le nostre continue possibilità di scelta in ogni campo o attività, non mi interessa il valore letterario dell'opera o la capacità stilistica dell'autrice; questo non è un romanzo, è un documento, è storia viva e come tale deve essere valutato e giudicato: è un libro capace di scatenare emozioni, ragionamenti e valutazioni e che offre diversi livelli di lettura e angolazioni da osservare gli eventi.

Quello storico, perché narra la storia di un popolo vicinissimo a noi, densa di avvenimenti e di capovolgimenti di fronte (è incredibile quando l'autrice raffronta l'adolescenza della sua generazione con quella delle sue allieve, paradossalmente più libera e spensierata: chi riesce a pensare ad un Iran dove le donne passeggiano senza velo, parlano liberamente di cinema e letteratura, ma soprattutto lo fanno con chi vogliono, quando vogliono e dove vogliono?) eppure così lontano da noi e da quella culla della civiltà che è stato con i Persiani.

Quello letterario, perché, seppur a volte un po' pedanti, tutte le sue riflessioni su Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, Henry James e Francis Scott Fitzgerald, sono piene di ardore e di passione, di dedizione e di rinnovato stupore e non fanno altro che rinverdire i ricordi delle nostre letture o di stimolarne di nuove.

Quello emotivo ma, soprattutto quello femminile: perché è la donna che in Iran è quotidianamente violentata sotto tutti i punti di vista, e forse (quando ciò avviene), quello fisico è solo l'aspetto esteriore della violenza subita: la punta dell'iceberg.
Il tentativo di annientamento psicologico delle donne, da parte degli integralisti, è qualcosa di demoniaco, da far gridare al sacrilegio: eppure è camuffato da religione. L'empatia e l'immedesimazione sono istintive: da donna a donna.
La privazione di tutto, soprattutto dei sogni e del futuro, sono quello che le autorità iraniane impongono giorno dopo giorno ai danni delle donne in maniera particolare, ma anche a tutta una generazione alla quale, poco alla volta, credono di riuscire a far dimenticare cosa volesse dire essere liberi.

Doveva essere bello leggere Lolita a Teheran, ma anche Orgoglio e Pregiudizio, oppure Daisy Miller, oppure Il Grande Gatsby guardando le montagne innevate, o in quelle piccole sale da tè mangiando un dolcetto ricoperto di miele.
Doveva essere bello leggere Lolita a Teheran con il vento che scompigliava i capelli.

Grazie a Azar Nafisi e alle donne come lei è ancora possibile ricordarlo.




[commento in corso di lettura]

Dentro un libro la storia: la storia intorno a noi.

Leggere "Leggere Lolita a Teheran" e sentirsi dentro la storia.
È di oggi la notizia di nuovi scontri all'Università di Teheran.
Mentre leggo il romanzo biografico di Azar Nafisi, che narra della rivoluzione islamica e degli scontri all'Università di Teheran dei primissimi anni '80, mi accorgo che tutto cambia e tutto si trasforma, tranne qualcosa: ci sono popoli che sembrano aver perso per sempre il proprio diritto alla vita e alla "normalità".