Reading Lolita in Tehran (Originally published July 1, 2013)

I purchased Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi about eight years ago, when it was a best-seller. I was intrigued by the premise of a secret book club in Iran, by women loving literature so much that they were willing to risk their lives to read it. When I glanced through it, I realized that it was divided into four sections: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. Having only read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility at that time, I decided to read the suggested titles by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen before plunging into this memoir. After all, I couldn’t let the characters be more well-read than I!

Little did I know that this would become an eight-year journey. I stumbled through Nabokov (oh, to have a teacher like Nafisi to guide me!). The other titles were easier to comprehend, but with the turns my life took (two boys in high school marching band), it took me much longer than anticipated. This spring I completed the last title, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, and I was ready.

What inspired and intrigued me was Nafisi’s commentary on literature. She says, “Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world.” (p. 94).

I was a history major in college, not a literature major. I have always loved reading, but have never interacted with books so much as absorbed them. One of the reasons I started this blog was as a tool for me to interact with my reading more, to think about the ideas presented in the books I’m going through. Seeing the intensity and fierceness that the girls in the book had towards literature made me realize how casually I’ve taken the ability to read whatever I’ve wanted. In a free country, we hold these freedoms so carelessly that, until we see what it’s like for others, we don’t see what privileges we have.

This book, although not fiction, has forced me to question what I took for granted and think more about what I’m reading. I’ve never been one to mark in books or fold corners to mark passages, but I did in this book, to save the passages I want to consider for this blog. It felt strange but also liberating. I’ll discuss these other passages in future posts.

So, read on – and question and be unsettled!