Lolita, Gatsby, and the Ayatollah

Rating: ☆☆☆

Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Author: Azar Nafisi

Genre: Non-Fiction / Middle East

Read: 27 th July 2005




Comments: As a first hand account of life under a fundamentalist Muslim regime, it's chilling, and as book of literary criticism and insight it's interesting, especially for its look at classics of Western literature from an Islamic viewpoint, but as a memoir it fails. Obviously the author has been through horrors that we can hardly even begin to imagine, but her core personality remains cold and detached from the narrative even when speaking of people and events which supposedly moved her deeply. Perhaps this is due to of shell-shock or the traumas she's endured, but the end result is that she becomes impossible to empathasize with. That said I still recommend this book highly as a view of a society and a way of thinking that most of us know too little about.

Quote: 'Living in the Islamic Republic is liking having sex with a man you loathe.'

Reading Lolita in Tehran