ABCD Reads "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi

ABCD Reads "Reading Lolita in Tehran", a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.

[RESULTS of the poll for this event]

:: ABOUT THE BOOK ::
"Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature." (from Goodreads)

"Azar Nafisi’s engrossing Reading Lolita in Tehran is the sort of book that ruins the sleep of those in charge of placing books in bookstores. Where to shelve it? Under literary criticism? No, for although it subjects a number of classics to revealing scrutiny, that would miss much of its point. Under memoirs? Similar problems: although its story is intertwined with the life of its author, it is not that life. Women’s issues or feminism would not be entirely out of place—the main characters who both act and suffer in this book are female—but again, in such a classification something would be lacking. A mischievous soul might stash it under book groups, which would be about as close as my college library’s choice of veterinary medicine for Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon: there is a book group in Reading Lolita, but it is more like a life raft than an after-work s