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A review by mehvie
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
4.0
A good teacher is one who sees their students potential and helps them succeed. Azar Nafisi is one of those teachers, who chose seven students to join her every Thursday to discuss classics which were forbidden in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. Each one of her students brought to their discussions their own points of views and how these novels made them realize what they were going through. Through their weekly meetings, Nafisi helped them open up, express their feelings, and taught them to find happiness through difficult times. This novel is a memoir through different works of literature.
This book is divided into four parts: Lolita (Nabokov), Gatsby, James, and Austen. In each of these parts, the author entwines the realities of her life (and her students and Tehran's political situation) to the fictional world which they are currently reading about. My favorite part was the Gatsby one, especially when her class took the Great Gatsby to trial. This book made me realize, how works of fiction can be connected to the realities of our lives, as fiction itself is written by people who have lived through their own realities.
Oh, how much I miss sitting in a lecture at the university, especially the one for my introduction to literature class; this book made me feel that I was back at university discussing great works, and analyzing what their profound sentences meant. I loved how each book which they read in their classes were somehow aligned to their current situation be it political or personal. Each author's book which they discussed started a character's story, their story about their own difficulties in life.
There were parts which went over my head as I had never read the books she mentions in her memoir, but the good part is that she explains the stories, so thankfully I didn't get lost completely. I enjoyed the amount of history in this book, and I got many new books added to my 'to-be-read' pile.
A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals and creates enough space for all those characters to have a voice. And she did that ! Each character, from herself to her mentor, students, and her friends voiced their opinions and expressed what they believed in.
On the whole, I wouldn't mind reading this book all over again. P.s keep a dictionary close by and hopefully you guys are good with names cause there are A LOT of names to remember.
This book is divided into four parts: Lolita (Nabokov), Gatsby, James, and Austen. In each of these parts, the author entwines the realities of her life (and her students and Tehran's political situation) to the fictional world which they are currently reading about. My favorite part was the Gatsby one, especially when her class took the Great Gatsby to trial. This book made me realize, how works of fiction can be connected to the realities of our lives, as fiction itself is written by people who have lived through their own realities.
Oh, how much I miss sitting in a lecture at the university, especially the one for my introduction to literature class; this book made me feel that I was back at university discussing great works, and analyzing what their profound sentences meant. I loved how each book which they read in their classes were somehow aligned to their current situation be it political or personal. Each author's book which they discussed started a character's story, their story about their own difficulties in life.
There were parts which went over my head as I had never read the books she mentions in her memoir, but the good part is that she explains the stories, so thankfully I didn't get lost completely. I enjoyed the amount of history in this book, and I got many new books added to my 'to-be-read' pile.
A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals and creates enough space for all those characters to have a voice. And she did that ! Each character, from herself to her mentor, students, and her friends voiced their opinions and expressed what they believed in.
On the whole, I wouldn't mind reading this book all over again. P.s keep a dictionary close by and hopefully you guys are good with names cause there are A LOT of names to remember.