Taken from my blog,
Why did I borrow this book? Maybe the word Lolita caught my
attention? Maybe I wanted to know more about the people in Iran?
Well, although the pace is a bit slow, it is still a good read.
Somehow certain parts of this book remind me of Singapore. You have
to read it to know what I meant by that.
Taken from the back of the book,
In Iran on the late 90s, Azar Nafisi and seven young women her
former students gathered at her house every Thursday to discuss
forbidden works of Western literature. Shy and uncomfortable at
first, they soon began to open up, not only about the novels they
were reading but also about their own dreams and disappointments.
Their personal stories intertwine with those they are reading
Pride and Prejudice, Washington
Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita their Lolita, as they
imagined here in Tehran. Azar Nafisi also tells her own story, back
to the early days of the revolution when she first started teaching
at the University of Tehran, amid a swirl of protests and
demonstrations.
An excerpt from the book page 94,
I explained that 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. It
questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too
immutable. 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, like
Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.
