Reading Lolita In Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Last night our book club read "Reading Lolita In Tehran" by Azar Nafisi. This book is written by a female English literature professor who taught in Tehran. In the prologue she says it's a real accounting of a book club she held but she also says the characters have been changed for their own protection to the point where they may not even recognize themselves. Seems to me it should be one or the other. She writes about how it was to be an educated and affluent female during the revolution. Once Iran was known as a center for female progressiveness. Women were respected, educated, and successful. Women were pilots of airliners. The culture changed. And she makes the point that the citizens allowed the culture to change. The culture changed to the point where it became illegal for a woman to shop for groceries without a chador (head scarf). Anything a woman did that caused a man to feel lust became a punishable offense. Pink socks could cause lust. A strand of hair outside the chador could cause lust. Polished fingernails could cause lust. Eating an apple could cause lust. The men were not punished for their feelings of lust - only the women for arousing them. The chador, once a symbol of holiness, once banned from being worn in public in the 1940's, was changed into some kind of sexual perversion prevention plan. Nafisi sneaks a few glimpses of the culture into a story that cuts back and forth through time. She is banned from teaching at the University because of her refusal to wear a chador. She starts a book club for 7 students at her house where they discuss English literature. Each chapter concentrates on a piece of literature but we really couldn't find a connection between life in Tehran and the books they were reading in the book club. In one chapter they discuss The Great Gatsby. This chapter occurs while she is still teaching at the University. Students in her class are reluctant to speak freely because one of the students is a Muslim extremist and they are afraid of reprisal. She decides to open the debate by putting The Great Gatsby on trial. The extremist student argues the book should be banned. She argues on behalf of the book. Despite her bravery and her actions that go against the cultural repression of women, she surprisingly escapes punishment. I wouldn't put this book in my top 25 favorite list, but I thought "Reading Lolita in Tehran" was worth the time I spent reading it. Now I want to read "Lolita."