Boringgg. Not enough dialogue to keep me interested. And I don’t like this story within a story business. If I want to read the books mentioned in the novel I’ll read them..

I just couldn’t get into it.

I couldn’t finish it—no quotation marks. That drives me crazy.

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I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Nafisis’s prose are translucent, firm, and poetic. Her meandering and reflective way of writing enhances the book’s sense of longing. That’s what to story is all about, really. Longing for love, happiness, freedom, entertainment, individuality, direction, faith, and ideology.

Personally, I found the secret class that opens and closes the book, far less interesting than the chapters on Gatsby and James which focus more on Nafisi’s time teaching at the university, and how she related to a student body raised on a form of morality laced political ideology she found unbearably restrictive. I thought those chapters far more rich and thought provoking than the chapters on Lolita and Austen.

Even so, I never wanted to put the book down. I was engaged throughout, and would definitely recommend this to a wide range of people, from those interested in literary theory to those enjoy memoir, or even those who love tales full of intrigue. This is an incredibly well rounded book. There is a little something for just about everyone in it.

Finished this today. It’s not going on my favorites shelf (few do), but I am left with a certain fondness for the book. True, I was expecting more about the secret lit classes than general life and politics in Iran during the revolution. This book, however, did give me a new perspective on Lolita and The Great Gatsby, as well as prompting me to read “Daisy Miller” yesterday and start Pride and Prejudice today. That alone made the book worth reading. But it also, if only for a moment, gave me a new appreciation for things I take for granted.. small things, such as colorful socks and chocolate.. and larger things, such as male friends and women’s rights.

”A novel is not an allegory … It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience.”

Reading this book was an educational experience for me. Her discussion of literature has helped me to see Lolita and The Great Gatsby in a new light. What I learned most about was the social and political climate in Iran. I had tears in my eyes when reading about the horrible lengths people go to in the name of an ideology. This memoir is a testament to the power of the imagination. It imparts that imagination is needed for empathy and compassion. The villain in a novel, as in life, is the one who lacks imagination enough to empathize with others.

Rating: 4*/5

In Tehran, Iran, for two years during the late 1990s, literature professor Azar Nafisi conducted a secret class in her home for 7 women students. The class was about literature and read from works of Nabokov, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Jane Austin, and others. Reading Lolita in Tehran is professor Nafisi’s memoir of those years and those that came before, as Nafisi struggled to teach literature whose very characters and stories more often than not offended the Islamic authorities. Reading Lolita alternates between being a social history of modern Iran and the challenges for women to retain their dignity in a repressive Islamic state, and an inquiry into the power of fiction to open our eyes and give our lives meaning. Nafisi follows the lives of her students – their stories, fears, struggles, and triumphs – as each comes to terms with their lives and roles in the world. Ultimately many, like Nafisi, will choose to leave Iran, rather to continue to live in a culture where so much of their lives are proscribed.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is beautifully written. Anyone who cherishes literature will not only appreciate the subject matter, but the lyrical manner in which it is written. Highly recommended.

A book for people who are passionate about ideas. I loved it.

Somewhat tedious. I was expecting it to be far more of the story of Iranian women, rather than a series of dissertations on various authors.