Reading Lolita in Tehran

"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." Razieh in Reading Lolita in Tehran

I read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi this past week. This book is more than beautiful. This book is food. This book is bread. It will feed you.

Azar Nafisi is an Iranian woman, a teacher, and a scholar of Western literature. Her book begins with the class she taught out of her home after being expelled from the University of Tehran, the class to which the book title refers. A class of seven women who met every Thursday to read and discuss the relation between fiction and reality. Her reality is a world in which reading The Great Gatsby is controversial and Henry James stirs people to anger. A world in which people roam the streets punishing the suggestion of impropriety. A world in which keeping your soul together is a daily struggle against cruelty.

From here it expands into a kaleidoscope of memories of reading, of teaching, of revolution, of living in an Islamic republic, of living through war, of living under the veil, of oppression, of fear, of courage, of a magician.

She believes that the soul survives evil and is restored "through love and imagination."
Reading Henry James is not superfluous to life. Reading Henry James is at the core of what makes life worth living, reading Henry James is part of how we retain our empathy, our compassion, our humanity.

Her writing is visual and splashed with color in a way that I would like to emulate. My world is far too reductive and I am an unrepentant list-er.

I cannot do this book justice. I can only recommend that you pick it up. This book is food. It is bread. It will feed you.