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Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Penguin Random House, 2003. 356 pgs.

There was a time when I was desperate for a reaffirmation of literature’s value, so I got intrigued when I saw the title of this memoir. It is as catchy as what the book sets out to do—offering a rereading of Western literature in the context of a contemporary Middle Eastern state in thrall to theocracy for more than four decades. Though this idea is not fully realised, I think the book does tell some vivid personal stories about the importance of fiction at times of oppression. This is a book to read for leisure if you look for examples of how to sustain an independent mind in a troubled world.

Azar Nafisi, a professor of English literature, recounts her experience of teaching in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. In theocratic Iran, women, though having access to higher education, are second-class citizens, and are required to wear the hijab, and its full-length version, the chador, when going out. The narrative starts by asking readers to picture seven female students one by one, each of a different mindset and disposition. Together, they take clandestine classes every Thursday to discuss the works of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Jane Austen, all of which are censored in Iran. Flashing backward and forward, the story follows the girls’ growth and the author’s encounters with people who hold different views of the Revolution. The narratives are interlaced with the Revolution (1979–early 1980s), the Iran-Iraq War (1981–1988), and the classes after Nafisi resigned from her university position and before she emigrated (the 1990s).

A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic—not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so.

Nafisi stresses the “democratic” nature of novels in their interrogation of multiple voices and their power in nurturing our respect for differences. In an attempt to “decolonise” Western canons, the book highlights Lolita and The Great Gatsby as stories of disenchantment. What started as dreams, which can be “misread” as the collective wish to rejuvenate Islamic rules, have turned out to be corrupt. Ironically, in the text, the dreams happen to be embodied in female subjects, and in reality, they result in the thwarting and repression of the people, especially women. Yet, the comparison only goes as far as paralleling plots and Iranian society. This premise serves as the backbone of the book, but I was hoping to see deeper literary interpretations of how the style, ideology, and language of the texts speak to Iran.

I enjoyed reading about the Thursday classes, an all-women setting open to free discussions, in contrast to the repressive patriarchy outside. In the sections on James and Austen, the class put the writers’ texts in dialogue with their real life, steering their discussions to religion, sexuality, and marriage. As the students struggle to make sense of their daily painstaking negotiation between Islamic teachings and Western liberalism, their conversations become contentious. You sense the awkwardness in the movement of the girls’ glances, sometimes flaring, sometimes flinching. These instances destabilise what we take for granted as a single-channelled voice of the prototypical “Islamic-educated women”. I even think this discomfort arising from differences fleshes out the “democracy” in the author’s mind—instead of a comfortable sanctuary, it starts with the boldness to navigate disputes. As we know, dissonance is the last thing dictatorship wants.

This compelling touch however loses colour in the later part of the book, when the story dissolves into repetitions and a moralistic binarism of right and wrong. While this personal memoir is not supposed to present a full picture of Iran, I expected to see more than a plotline of “the struggle of progressive women against stubborn Islamic fundamentalists” as if there is no in-between. The in-class trial of The Great Gatsby set to judge the characters in the novel purports to lend voice to students with opposing views. Yet, the author is clearly in favour of those who embrace the West. Apart from one character, the rest of the conservatives are caricatured as fanatics who only know to repeat doctrine. The way the characters are portrayed on an unequal footing contradicts with the “democratic” element that the book envisions.

But why should we read this book twenty years after its publication? In Iran, protests against the hijab law are ongoing, and women’s rights in neighbouring Afghanistan are regressing. This memoir can yield very different personal readings, but it could spur your interest in these interrelated regions. It also calls into question broader issues: the relationship between fiction and reality, the clashes between Islamic/Asian and Western values, and how to cultivate self-reflexivity under the rule of a regime. Tyranny in any form is never far from us; it is a matter of whether we dare to question it.

How to cite: Chow, Garfield. “Where Are the Other Voices We Want to Hear? Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 1 Jul. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/07/01/reading-lolita.

Garfield Chow‘s works have been published in Cha: An Asian Art Journal and Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. She’s looking to find a place for the arts in the digital world, and sometimes appears on https://medium.com/@garfield.chowyn.

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