Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a memoir by Iranian American author Azar Nafisi, first released to widespread critical and popular acclaim in 2003. The memoir recalls Nafisi’s experiences living and teaching in Iran after the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran, until her eventual exile in the United States in 1997.

At the center of the memoir is Nafisi’s account of a secret book club she hosted during her last two years in Iran. During the weekly sessions with a handpicked group of female former students, Nafisi and her “girls” read and discuss classic works of English literature, with particular importance placed on the works of Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov, American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, American British author Henry James, and English author Jane Austen. Throughout the memoir, Nafisi uses literature as a lens through which she interprets and analyzes the political, cultural, and social issues that dominated life in the Islamic Republic during the 1980s and 1990s.

This guide uses the paperback Penguin Modern Classics edition of Reading Lolita in Tehran, published in 2015.

Content Warning: The source text contains allusions and/or depictions of political and domestic violence, including allusions to child sexual abuse, and death by suicide.

Summary

Reading Lolita in Tehran is divided into four parts, with a short epilogue. Each of the four parts is named after a prominent author or work of English literature, which has a central place in illuminating the events and themes discussed in each section.

In “Part 1: Lolita,” Nafisi takes Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita as her central text. Nafisi discusses how, after resigning from her position as literature professor at the University of Allameh Tabatabei in Tehran, she is left longing to continue teaching in some form. In the mid-1990s, she decides to form a private reading seminar, or book club, with a handpicked, all-female group of former university students. The purpose of the book club is to discuss works of both Persian and English literature freely, without having to worry about the ideological restrictions placed upon professors and students by the Islamic Iranian regime.

Nafisi describes her students, who come from a variety of backgrounds and ideological positions, and the oppression they face as women and intellectuals. The discussions around Lolita and Nabokov’s work generally center upon Nabokov’s depictions of abuse, oppression, and the experience of living under a totalitarian regime, a system in which the government demands complete obedience and allows no opposition.

In “Part 2: Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is the central text. Nafisi reveals more about her background as a student and would-be revolutionary in the United States during the 1970s, as well as her early years of teaching after her return to Iran. Nafisi recounts the increasingly oppressive and violent atmosphere that follows in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, including the ideological pressures and censorship directed toward literature and her teaching of it.

During one of her literature classes, a controversy erupts surrounding The Great Gatsby: The students who are firm supporters of the Islamic regime object to what they see as the novel’s lax morality, while Nafisi and the other students defend the novel. They host a mock “trial” in which the novel is the defendant. Both the novel and trial prompt Nafisi to reflect on the power of literature and the dangers of turning dreams into reality, as both Gatsby and Iranians themselves discover.

“Part 3: James” features the works of Henry James as the central literary focus. In this section, Nafisi recalls her experiences during the lengthy Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), a time of political and personal hardship for Nafisi. Nafisi describes the increasingly strict measures imposed upon women, especially within the university. Nafisi feels increasingly alienated from Iranian academia and experiences tensions within her marriage. She details her burgeoning friendship with “Mr. R,” also known as her “magician,” who is a former filmmaker and intellectual who refuses to cooperate with the new Islamic regime.

Nafisi is eventually persuaded to start teaching at the University of Allameh Tabatabei after leaving the University of Tehran, but finds herself increasingly unhappy with the restraints placed upon her. Nafisi invokes Henry James’s experiences during World War I and, in particular, his works Daisy Miller and Washington Square, in discussing war, freedom, and her debates about how far she can go in cooperating with the regime.

The book’s final section, “Part 4: Austen,” centers upon the works of Jane Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice. In this section, Nafisi focuses more closely on the personal tribulations of her female students and their shared experiences in the secret book club. Nafisi also discusses her own private dilemmas, especially her eventual decision to emigrate from Iran. Nafisi uses Austen’s works as inspiration for reflecting on the connections between the personal and the political, especially the ways in which a totalitarian regime infiltrates even the most private aspects of an individual’s existence. The section closes with her final days in Iran, ending with her last visit to her magician.

In the brief Epilogue, Nafisi summarizes what happened to her female students in the years after she left Iran in 1997. While some of her students remain in Iran, a significant number have moved abroad, seeking more freedom and new lives in Europe and the United States.