Saturday, November 12, 2005
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Reading Lolita in Tehran is one book that has so lived up to the hype generated around it. It talks about struggle - a daily struggle to even just live the way the you want, forget fulfilling dreams and aspirations, fight for your right to read, write and move around.
It has now earned a huge reputation and I did begin reading it, thinking here I am going to read mostly about the need for emanciapation in Iran, primarily for women and the fight for democracy.
But instead what I encountered is a tale very poignantly woven with lives of Azar Nafisi's students - their past, their presents and tentative future plans with doyens of literature - Jane Austen, Henry James, Nabukov.
The books, their discusions and the events happening around them - all talk of a time when being a woman in Iran must have seemed like a huge challenge. From being punished while eating an ice cream to not showing a single strand of hair to bigger things like demonstrations disrupting class to professors castigated for picking the wrong books.
In the light of Iraq and the US Invasion, I had never really given too much thought to Iran and how bad it was in the eighties and nineties. For the longest time Ayatollah Khomeni was the person who wanted Salman Rushdie dead. Lets say I was well much less informed about Iran and leave it at that. Why make a flag of my ignorance?
Persecution usually brings to light how bad it was for a certain section and it is always in hindsight. Her book today is a memoir. You finish the book wondering what happened to all those people who make a fleeting mention in her book. Her key or core team (as we would call them today) are present right till the end in some form or the other but that one really conservation student. with buttoned down shirts and dislike for James, or that girl who she sees in the middle of rally and wonders why she never came back... or even the Magician.. on a bittersweet note you wonder where they are today.
PS this book is another one of those which I read a couple of pages, in one random jaunt into a bookstore and then suddenly by the time I decided to buy it, it became too fashionably popular. But do read it and no it is not really a feminist slanted book.
Here is what the book is about and here are some reviews put together in one place.
It has now earned a huge reputation and I did begin reading it, thinking here I am going to read mostly about the need for emanciapation in Iran, primarily for women and the fight for democracy.
But instead what I encountered is a tale very poignantly woven with lives of Azar Nafisi's students - their past, their presents and tentative future plans with doyens of literature - Jane Austen, Henry James, Nabukov.
The books, their discusions and the events happening around them - all talk of a time when being a woman in Iran must have seemed like a huge challenge. From being punished while eating an ice cream to not showing a single strand of hair to bigger things like demonstrations disrupting class to professors castigated for picking the wrong books.
In the light of Iraq and the US Invasion, I had never really given too much thought to Iran and how bad it was in the eighties and nineties. For the longest time Ayatollah Khomeni was the person who wanted Salman Rushdie dead. Lets say I was well much less informed about Iran and leave it at that. Why make a flag of my ignorance?
Persecution usually brings to light how bad it was for a certain section and it is always in hindsight. Her book today is a memoir. You finish the book wondering what happened to all those people who make a fleeting mention in her book. Her key or core team (as we would call them today) are present right till the end in some form or the other but that one really conservation student. with buttoned down shirts and dislike for James, or that girl who she sees in the middle of rally and wonders why she never came back... or even the Magician.. on a bittersweet note you wonder where they are today.
PS this book is another one of those which I read a couple of pages, in one random jaunt into a bookstore and then suddenly by the time I decided to buy it, it became too fashionably popular. But do read it and no it is not really a feminist slanted book.
Here is what the book is about and here are some reviews put together in one place.
Monday, November 07, 2005
A decidely vague article and another example of the Indian press getting up a tad late..
