Reading Lolita in Tehran

To most of us who love reading books, the stories have meanings beyond the plot. In many ways, the stories have shaped how we see places, people and even ourselves. Reading Lolita in Tehran is about all this and more.

In a country taken over by religious fanatics, Azar Nafisi, tells her story of how and she and her students found liberation through books. How they found the courage to face oppression at home and in the streets, how their minds refused to be bound even though their bodies were.

In her little book reading class, Azar finds the women slowly transforming themselves as they encouter Lolita, Elizabeth Bennett and others who stood out and stood up for themselves. The class soon becomes their little act of rebellion against Khomeini's transformation of Iran from a liberal to a fanatical society. Finding their bodies suddenly encased and covered from head to toe, their movement within their own country and city restricted, these women use books and stories to experience other worlds, and to let these experiences shape their own decisions.

Reading Lolita... brings to life what some books have meant for each of us, it puts in words how some characters have shaped us, and its pages recount the solace that I have found at many points in time in certain books. It is a book lover's tribute to books, her memoir of the most potent influence in her life and how that helped shape an act of individual rebellion for a group of girls in Islamic Iran.