Reading "Lolita" In Tehran

The Islamic revolution in Iran through the eyes of a female Literature professor. When oppressive totalitarian regimes take away your freedom, your right to move in public, your right to feel the sun and wind on your skin, they usually also come to take away your art. Movie theatres close, foreign music is forbidden, and books like The Great Gatsby are put on trial for propagating questionable morals. Reading Lolita in Tehran shows us the cruel fate of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where one generation of women could walk and marry freely, while the next generation receives prison sentences for wearing nail-polish. Nafisi and the girls in her private class compare themselves to the heroins and victims in famous novels. Literature becomes a way for them to make sense of and to rebel against the Muslim customs and regime.

A fascinating and eye-opening read. Yet I found it a bit too long and unstructured for my taste. Sometimes I got lost in time. And some segments had a clearer connection between the discussed novel and the societal dynamics in Iran (Lolita), while others felt more random.