BookStalking

This is really much more of a “my-wife” book. She likes true stories, typically where everyone dies at the end, especially if it is about gender roles. Man, she’s gonna love this one.

Nafisi writes in a confessional style of her experiences as a teacher of literature in Iran, during the revolution. She describes in an increasingly despairing tone the changes in the society she lives in and finally leaves. She leaves her university as political pressure descend upon it, creating an atmosphere she finds untenable.  Unable to restrain herself, she begins teaching a select group of her former students in her home.

The western authors that the small group studies become increasingly divorced and relevant to their lives as religious hard liners enact sweeping social changes. Each of the women is marked by these changes, and they resent it bitterly as they become marginalized in their own country, homes and even bodies.

It is an act of bravery and rebellion to study the literature they love, and it provides a source of sisterhood and even inspiration for them. What does Nabakov’s “Lolita” mean to a society that lowers the marriageable age to nine? What does Austen’s stories of love and passion mean to girls who grow up with a fear expressing such emotions even in the most private of settings?

Nafisi’s evocative history of a time that was not so long ago should remind us that the freedoms known to our grandparents should not be taken for granted.

The sum up:

I didn’t necessarily like it, but I respected it. My wife will probably love it. 

This entry was posted Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 11:05 pm and is filed under reviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.