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Book Cover
Book
Author Nafisi, Azar.

Title Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books / Azar Nafisi
Published Sydney : Hodder Headline Australia, 2003

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  955.0543 Naf/Rli  AVAILABLE
Description 347 pages ; 24 cm
Summary An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, the book is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into colour." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes
Analysis Iran
Muslims
Women
Literature
Literacy
Tertiary students
Social conditions
Autobiography
Overseas item
Azar Nafisi
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Bibliography
Subject Nafisi, Azar.
English teachers -- Iran.
Books and reading -- Iran.
English teachers -- Iran -- Biography.
English literature -- Study and teaching -- Iran.
American literature -- Study and teaching -- Iran.
Women -- Books and reading -- Iran.
Group reading -- Iran.
Genre/Form Biography.
Autobiographies.
ISBN 0733618111