I'm in the midst of reading this incredible memoir by Azar Nafisi. It's the story of her life before during the Iranian Revolution, and the lives of the women in a reading group that she formed in the 1990's during the regime of Aytollah Khomeini. At the center of the peice is her interpretation and discussion of Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller and Pride and Predjudice---books that had been central to her life as she observed her world changing as the Islamic Republic of Iran was formed.

For me, the most edifying part of reading this book is learning about the surreal nature of everyday life for a woman in Iran. Forced to wear the hajib or veil (a ritual that in Islam is an expression one's relationship with God) in public, women are under the constant scrutiny of the "morality squads"--- volunteers to the Republic who patrol the streets with guns, on the constant look out for stray hairs, polished nails, exposed ankles/socks. A woman can be arrested for wearing too vivid a color of lipstick.

What is wonderful about this book is not the dettached fascination a Western reader gets from reading about life in a totalitarian state, but the true insights into one's own culture one receives by seeing the world through the eyes of teh oppressed. Nafisi teaches of the difference between empty rituals and acts of expression, of fighting for ideals versus fighting for one's life, of the danger of using literature and art as parables for morality.

I think this is a very important book. Especially for those of us are passionate readers and who are currently struggling with the growing irrelevence of art in our own countries. I encourage each one of you to pick it up---it will be worth it.

Sounds like an incredible book! I have Lolita, it's on my reading list...

The Middle East fascinates me.

i must admit i started reading it then stopped.

i found her attitude to her students (at least the bit i read) to be quite patrinising, her habbit of calling them "my girls" *shudder* they weren't girls, they were intelligent women!

maybe it got better later on, i'll try again...at some point.

I read an article that was critical of the same thing, Smaugy-- the "my girls" thing. When I read that reaction, I kind of was surprised that the reviewer didn't see that Nafisi opened the book mentioning that she referred to her group that way as a bit of a joke about "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (who also refers to her favorite group of students as "her girls") that turned into a term of endearment.

Throughout the book she repeatedly points out how brilliant and individual each of her students are and its clear to me that she sees each student as an individual and also an equal.

I read it and really didn't care for it at all. I was expecting it to be different. There's a novel that was published by a wife in some well to do family, (I think) and I confused the two. The one I thought it was were the woman couldn't buy milk for her baby - she had to get a man to go into the store to buy it. I think she ended up emigrating to the US. Any one recall that one?

Alaura - I've just seen this (I never usually come into this bit of the forum, but I'm procrastinating wildly about a piece of work....)

Yes, I read this, and found it extraordinary. I'm especially glad to have read it in the current climate - it taught me a fair bit about Iran that I had no idea of.

I haven't read it myself so I won't discuss it. I'm just very critical towards it before actually reading it as in most cases when there's an autobiography about something like this. However, i wont express any opinions before actually reading it