Reading L0l1ta in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

A novel is not all allegory... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.

When I first heard about this book, I brushed it aside. I've read most of L0l1ta, and it wasn't for me. But, after I heard a few other people mention it, I decided to pick it up. It's a book that makes you catch your breath and gets you to think.

I loved reading about all the fiction, even L0l1ta. When I first started reading, I thought perhaps this book would convince me to try it again. It didn't do that, but it did get me to see it in a different light and to consider reading Nabokov's other books (I'm still not interested in re-visiting this young girl's mental and physical victimization, but I can see the parallels to life in Iran during and after the revolution).

Her discussions about F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Jane Austen (and numerous other authors) illuminate this book that has so many dark stories. Her love for fiction and the light that it brings to her and her students made me value the power of books in a way I haven't before.

Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, the ordinary relations, people like you and me - Reader! Bruder! as Humbert said. Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to "see" others, hence to empathize with them.

As I read about the impact the revolution had on the women's lives in this book, I realized that the reason I don't identify myself as a feminist is that I do not feel that my political rights are threatened. If I thought that my voting rights, my religious rights, or my right to free speech were threatened because I was a woman, I would become an activist in a nanosecond. If I felt it were safe to do so, anyway.

These women aren't safe. Many of them experience what happens when people are able to view and treat others with almost no empathy.

I saw some similarities between this book and the books that I have been reading on the Holocaust. When reading about the WWII, I was struck by how recent this is in our history. Anne Frank was born a year before my mother. Reading this book hit even closer to home. I remember the hostages in Iran and I remember Khomeini. This book made me want to learn more about the modern history of Iran.

This book wasn't all light and sensation. There were times when the author's voice was a bit grating, there were things that I didn't understand (her first marriage, and when she spoke of 'my magician' so intimately, but she didn't let us into either relationship... and I wasn't sure I even wanted her to), she gives little historical context, and sometimes I was bothered by her generalizations about Islam and men. But given her experiences, I'm not sure she could have spoken her truth and made me comfortable (and being uncomfortable can be a good thing). It wasn't the perfect book, but it was definitely worthwhile.