Azar Nafisi, Excerpt from "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books"

Azar Nafisi rose to international prominence in 2003, with the publication of her critically acclaimed bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. A professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, Dr. Nafisi was expelled from the University of Tehran in 1981 for refusing to wear the chador, or Islamic veil, as mandated by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Nafisi resumed teaching again in 1987, but resigned eight years later in protest over the harsh treatment of women by the Iranian government. Reading Lolita provides an account of the seminar that Nafisi then went on to hold in her home from 1995 to 1997, where seven of her best students joined her to discuss some of the classic texts of Western literature. Nafisi saw the change in her circumstances as an opportunity to fulfill a dream of working with "a group of students who just love literature-who are in it not for the grades, not to just graduate and get a job but just want to read Nabokov or Austen." That Nafisi and her students persisted in this activity, despite the obvious dangers it posed, has come to symbolize, for readers around the world, how the struggle against totalitarianism is waged on the level of everyday human experience.

Currently a Visiting Fellow and professorial lecturer at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., Nafisi directs The Dialogue Project, "a multi-year initiative designed to promote-in a primarily cultural context-the development of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world." At the same time, The Dialogue Project is also engaged in a program of education and outreach designed to provide knowledge about the Muslim world to Western policymakers, scholars, development professionals, media workers, and citizens.  

For Nafisi, our freedom to talk and think together in small groups, in a context where the ideas raised and the topics covered are not determined in advance, is the litmus test for a true democracy; to engage in this act, she believes, is to embrace a humanity that transcends national and religious differences.  

Nafisi, Azar. Excerpt from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2003. 3-26.
Biographical information drawn from Azar Nafisi's home page; the extended quote about The Dialogue Project is drawn from The Dialogue Project web site.
Digital image drawn from the WNYC web site.

Link to Explore:

http://dialogueproject.sais-jhu.edu/: The Dialogue Project website-part of an initiative, directed by Nafisi, that is promoting the expansion of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world as well as supporting interaction between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Question for Learning:

• The theme of Nafisi's class was "the relation between fiction and reality." In discussing Western fiction, the students also discussed the reality of Tehran. In so doing, they made an ostensibly foreign literature their own. How can such discussion of topics that seem remote from contemporary politics actually serve a political purpose? Use the goals of The Dialogue Project to guide your thinking.

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Question for Connecting:

• Would you say that Nafisi calls into question Eric Schlosser's negative portrayal of American culture overseas? Do we export more than Big Macs and the culture of Las Vegas? On the other hand, is it conceivable that a market-driven society can be as one-dimensional as the Islamic Republic of Iran, albeit without the use of force? In Iran, no one can escape the power of the mullahs. In the United States, is it any easier to escape the power of the market-or should we reject any analogy between the two?

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