Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [190]
Henry James, The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller, and Washington Square
Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony and The Trial
Katherine Kressman Taylor, Address Unknown
Herman Melville, The Confidence Man
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pnin
Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon
Diane Ravitch, The Language Police
Julie Salamon, The Net of Dreams
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
Scheherazade, A Thousand and One Nights
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
Joseph Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls
Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno
Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups and St. Maybe
Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
Reading
Lolita
in
Tehran
Azar Nafisi
A READER’S GUIDE
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Questions for Discussion
1. On her first day teaching at the University of Tehran, Azar Nafisi began class with some questions: “What should fiction accomplish? Why should anyone read at all?” What are your answers to these questions? How does fiction force us to question what we often take for granted?
2. Yassi adores playing with words, particularly with Nabokov’s fanciful linguistic creation upsilamba (18). What does the word upsilamba mean to you?
3. In what ways had Ayatollah Khomeini “turned himself into a myth” for the people of Iran (246)? Discuss the recurrent theme of complicity in the book: the idea that the Ayatollah, the stern philosopher-king who limited freedoms and terrorized the innocent, “did to us what we allowed him to do” (28). To what extent are the supporters of a revolution responsible for its unintended results?
4. Compare attitudes toward the veil held by men, women and the government in the Islamic Republic of Iran. How was Nafisi’s grandmother’s choice to wear the chador marred by the political significance it had gained (192)? Also, describe Mahshid’s conflicted feelings as a Muslim who already observed the veil but who nevertheless objected to its political enforcement.
5. In discussing the frame story of the murderous king in A Thousand and One Nights, Nafisi mentions three types of women who fell victim to his unreasonable rule (19). What is the relevance of this story for the women in Nafisi’s private class?
6. Explain what Nafisi means when she calls herself and her beliefs increasingly “irrelevant” in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Compare her way of dealing with this irrelevance to the self-imposed exile of the man she calls her “magician.” What can people who “lose their place in the world” do to survive, both physically and creatively?
7. During the Gatsby trial, Zarrin charges Mr. Nyazi with the inability to “distinguish fiction from reality” (128). How does Mr. Nyazi’s conflation of the fictional and the real compare to the actions of the blind censor, who retains the authority to suppress performances when he cannot even see? Discuss the role of censorship in both authoritarian and democratic governments. Can you think of instances in the United States when art was censored for its “dangerous” impact upon society?
8. Nafisi writes: “It was not until I had reached home that I realized the true meaning of exile” (145). How do her conceptions of home conflict with those of her husband, Bijan, who is reluctant to leave Tehran? Also, compare Mahshid’s feeling that she “owes” something to Tehran to Mitra’s and Nassrin’s desires for freedom and escape. Discuss how the changing and often discordant influences of memory, family, safety, freedom, opportunity and duty define our sense of home and belonging.
9. Fanatics like Mr. Ghomi, Mr. Nyazi and Mr. Bahri consistently surprised Nafisi by displaying absolute hatred for Western literature–a reaction she describes as a “venom uncalled