"It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom."
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Reading Lolita in Tehran is the story of a teacher (Azar Nafisi) who met with a group of female students every Thursday morning for two years to discuss books. This does not sound extraordinary to most people. Many of us are in book groups of our own and find nothing earth shattering about the concept of reading books and then discussing them with others. However, this group was different. They met in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where censoring was the norm and the morality guards sought out the smallest deviation from Islamic law. Women are forced to wear veils, conform to nonsensical and prejudicial laws and treated as mere property.
Azar shows them a world foreign to them, a world where discussion and having your own opinions are celebrated, not subject to punishment. And in doing so, she reminds us who do not live under such restrictions how fortunate we truly are. Through their discussions on Nabokov and Austen, we catch glimpses of who these women truly are, without the veils and cautious behavior they display when in public. We get a first hand account of the revolution that closed the universities and saw anyone who dared speak out imprisoned or murdered. We saw the irony of a blind censor and a morality guard whose actions were anything but moral.
This book left me not only for a great respect for these women, who rebelled against the laws in both minor and not so minor ways, but also with a desire to read (or re-read) all the books mentioned. Not merely because I feel that I might get new insights out of these books after reading this story, but because I am free to do so- without fear.
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