Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

This was not a book for simple "pleasure reading". In fact, funny enough, I chose this book because I felt like I needed something to make me more intelligent. I didn't expect to actually want to read it. I thought it would be difficult to get through, but instead, I found that I enjoyed it. Really, I give it five starts, or a ten, or whatever. It is worth reading.
To quote Azar Nafisi
"Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. . . I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world. . ."
"It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides. . ."
"If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive. . . "
This book gave me reason to think on so many tiers. Initially, I felt bad for these women in Iran. The way they were forced into living a life of self- repression. Being forced to portray a feeling of humility and acceptance, while inside feeling like they were bursting at the seams to find themselves.
I thought about these women, I thought about Iran and why things were the way they were, and I thought about myself. Articulating what I thought and felt while reading this book would be inadequate. I loved reading it. I felt like my mind expanded. It wasn't light reading, but it was involving and thought provoking. There is some frank discussion about sexual relations, mainly because the women portrayed in the book didn't know what to think of it. These are simply factual discussions. Nothing steamy or offensive. It is a wonderful book and gives its readers insight into life in another world, so to speak. Click on the picture for more about this wonderful read.