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Sex with a man you loathe. . . Jul 21, 2003 (487 of 521 found this helpful)
Reading the reviews and the dust jacket, you can get the idea that this is a book about a book club. For this reader, it is more directly about the impact of the Islamic revolution on the lives of educated women in Iran. There women are required at the risk of their lives to wear the "veil," which symbolizes the surrender of their independence to a government that uses fear and intimidation to control them and, in the words of the author, make them "irrelevant."
The author, now living in the US, tells of almost two decades in Iran, as a teacher of English and American literature. She tells of the great hopes for reform after the fall of the Shah and the return from exile of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and with her we watch in horror as the revolution takes Iran by force instead into its medieval past. There are arrests, murders, and executions and those who can, flee to the West. The transformation of Iran is charted by the repressive attempts to make women invisible, by covering them in public from head to toe. It becomes a world in which wearing fingernail polish, even under gloves, is a punishable offense. And punishment, as we learn, is typically brutal.
The author escapes from this violence into the imaginative world of Western novels (from Nabokov to Dashiell Hammet) where she finds democratic ideals expressed in fiction's ability to help us empathize with other people. For her, it is the heart that has gone out of the gun-wielding moral police that want to sweep away all but complete submission to their fundamentalist form of Islam. And while she is a teacher, she must deal with classes filled with students who have been polarized by the political forces around them. All, curiously, are in single agreement that the West is corrupt and absolutely evil. Meanwhile, the novels of Western writers engage them, sometimes furiously. A wonderful sequence in the book concerns a mock trial in the classroom in which "The Great Gatsby" is brought up on charges of immorality.
"Lolita," we discover, becomes a story of a girl who finally escapes from the clutches of a man who wants to erase who she is and turn her into a figment of his imagination. It's not an allegory of Iran, Nafisi insists, but it's hard not to see the parallels. The contamination of personal relationships between men and women and its impact on love and marriage inform their readings of James and Austen. Meanwhile, even as her classes meet to argue the merits of these authors, their books are disappearing as one bookstore after another is closed down.
Added to all this is an account of living through eight years of war with Iraq, while missiles fall on Tehran and the numbers of casualties on the front lines mount. After leaving teaching, the author assembles a hand-picked group of former students, all female, to meet weekly at her home and talk more about books. Here the individual personalities and histories of each come to the fore, and we get a glimpse (as in fiction) into personal worlds experienced intensely under circumstances that have nearly robbed them of their identities.
It's easy to go on and on about this book. There is so much packed into it. Needless to say, I recommend it highly, especially to anyone who loves books or has taught literature. Obviously, it also informs many gender issues. For male readers, such as myself, it is like an extended version of Virginia Woolf's illuminating "A Room of One's Own." The author and her young students show how the lives of both men and women are impoverished in a world where one sex attempts to assume control over the other. For me, the book is best summed up in the author's words near the end: "Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe."
The books is not a polemic, and as the author would be first to admit, there are many other voices to be heard on the subject of Iran, its government, and its role in the world. For this reader, her book opens a door into a complex subjec
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a glimpse of Upsilamba! Jul 5, 2003 (95 of 105 found this helpful)
Azar Nafisi has written a brilliant, moving, and frightening book. As a professor of English literature at Tehran University, she provides a unique perspective on the Iranian revolution that changed the world.
She considers herself an intellectual. She marched against the west and the USA support of the Shah of Iran. She tells of the joy that she and her colleagues felt at his fall. She tells of the changes in everyday life for intellectuals and for women as the Islamists took over the country. She left her job at the university (a job that she loved) because she refused to wear the veil. She tells of the effects of the eight year long Iraq/Iran war on the women of Tehran, the tyranny of the religious leaders who issue their decrees as though they came directly from God.
Nafisi's story is one of change, tyranny, fascism, and the failure in the 20th century to defend women when their identity and their humanity are stolen in the name of religion. It is also the story of personal courage, intelligence, commitment, and love.
Nafisi lead a book discussion group for a select group of women in her home in Tehran before leaving Iran. The forbidden fruit that they read was Lolita, Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, and the Great Gatsby! They risked so much to do this; they risked imprisonment, beatings, rape, and perhaps execution.
She tells her story and some of the stories of her students through these group discussions. She has changed the name of the women that are still alive to protect them. She tells one of her student's stories. While in prison she knew of guards who repeatedly raped a young beautiful girl. They justified this punishment because their heinous acts would deny her access to heaven. In this interpretation of Islam, only virgins could go to heaven and God has no punishment for the rapists.
We, in the USA, live such safe, comfortable lives even in the wake of 9/11. Our free public libraries, bookstores, and Amazon.com provide such easy access to Nabokov, Austen, James, and Fitzgerald, and yet so few of us read them. We post public reviews on controversial books on Amazon.com accepting the minimal risk of a negative vote. What do we know of the Iranian revolution that in the name of Islam has made women invisible, that has morality police, and bans these dangerous books? Our respect for religious freedom makes us tenuous in dealing with atrocities committed in God's name!
I highly recommend this book.
Note to the author: if you are reading this, thank you for you have given us all a glimpse of Upsilamba!
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Complex and Moving! Apr 25, 2003 (56 of 61 found this helpful)
I read this book for a variety of reasons and I was rewarded on every level. It gave me insight into the world of Islamic Fundamentalism through the lives of some of the women who are forced to live according to its tenets; it increased my understanding of an important historical movement; it gave me some wonderful and nuanced insights into some favorite works of literature; and I was able to share the author's growth through very tumultuous times. This memoir is beautifully and suspensefully written--one really comes to care deeply about these brave women. Questions of courage and indentity are at the core of this book--how does one relate to a repressive regime without effacing oneself? This book is a journey that illuminates some of the conflicts at the core of our current age. I encourage you to read it!
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Absolutely not politically correct Jul 1, 2008 (52 of 57 found this helpful)
The author was a specialist for Western literature in the Iran of the Islamic Republic. That was of course a no-no and she lost her university job in 1995. Before finally emigrating to the US (where she is now probably a suspect as a sleeper of some kind), she did a remarkably courageous thing: she continued teaching girls in English language literature at home for two more years. The main message of the book is the story of the lessons and of the fate of the girls in a country that has gone back dramatically in civic freedoms.
I was reminded of this book, which I read a few years ago, by the discussions after I posted reviews of the novel and the first film Lolita. I realized that there are more interpretations of Lolita, the novel, than was mentioned in the discussion. For the group of women who read the book in Tehran, what was in the forefront was that somebody who has been forced to be with somebody that she didn't want to be with, can rise up and escape.
In a way though, Lolita is not really the main subject of the study group. The book ought to have been called Reading the Great Gatsby in Tehran or reading Jane Austen. Both take a lot more space. Obviously the title was chosen by marketing criteria. The title with Lolita sounds more interesting and it has a much better rhythm.
I am as often puzzled by the reactions here in Amazon. Where do all the negative reviews come from? Does the Iran have a fifth column of literate people who can write reviews?
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Quality reading... Jan 10, 2004 (29 of 30 found this helpful)
I thought this was a really good quality book. I found many parts touching, and I enjoyed the insight into the lives of the students with whom Nafisi met on a weekly basis to discuss controversial literature. Nafisi is a very interesting person and an impeccable writer. My only criticism (and it's more a matter of personal taste than anything)....I got very bogged down in the middle. I wanted to learn more about Nafisi's students. I assumed that they would be the main focus of the book from reading the blurb on the cover. The first and last sections focused mostly on the women's gatherings, but the middle sections focused mostly on the war situation in Iran. Not that that particular part wasn't interesting (in fact it was absolutely necessary to illustrate the state of the Islamic Republic), but I just found myself more captivated by the struggles and opinions of the women. I greatly enjoyed reading the insight into some of my favorite novels including The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice. I also added plenty of works to my growing wishlist based on the commentary between Nafisi and her students.