Reading Lolita in Tehran

Every Thursday morning in a living room in Iran, over tea and pastries, eight women meet in secret to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. As they lose themselves in the worlds of Lolita, The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice, gradually they come to share their own stories, dreams and hopes with each other, and, for a few hours, taste freedom. Azar Nafisi's bestselling memoir is a moving, passionate testament to the transformative power of books, the magic of words and the search for beauty in life's darkest moments.

Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book

Vivid, often heroic and sometimes funny ... Nafisi's rather wonderful book touches a beauty of its own

Remarkable ... an eloquent brief on the transformative power of fiction

Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She is the author of The Republic of Imagination and Things I've Been Silent About, and lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children.

Memories of a Prodigal Daughter

Things I've Been Silent About

A dazzling new memoir from the author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran

Things I've Been Silent About transports us to a world that is at once enchanting and threatening; it is a tale that mixes family feuds, politics and literature and holds our interest from the first to the last page

A beautiful and sensitive book... [Nafisi's] belief in the power of culture to transform lives and societies is inspiring

A companion memoir to the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, this is Azar Nafisi's more personal account of growing up in Iran...an intriguing memoir

Nafisi's account is rarely shrill or self pitying, preferring to let her stories tell themselves

This powerful memoir, from the author of the global hit Reading Lolita in Tehran, is a bewitching story ... Set against the background of change before the Islamic Revolution, it is a complex, provocative story of family life, lies and loves

Nafisi proves a compelling, and moving, witness

If you enjoyed the wonderful Reading Lolita in Tehran by this author, you have another treat in store... it offers wonderful insights

In her new book Nafisi ... once again blends the autobiographical and the political to write about the Iran of the past 80 years ... Nafisi, who has proven her political mettle by standing against both the Shad's and the Ayatollah's regimes, confronts her "inner censors" in this account of the life of a dysfunctional family in revolutionary times.  She used the story of her intellectually and politically prominent family as the "backdrop" to the turbulent history of 20th century Iran, a country trying to come to terms with modernity while remaining true to both its Islamic and imperial histories...Nafisi's vivid snapshots of life in pre-revolutionary Iran among the intellectual and political elite, with constant streams of social gatherings and endless political chatter and gossip, brings back to life a cultural milieu that largely disappeared with the 1979 Islamic revolution ... [and] the personal is skilfully interwoven with the social and political

This is a poignant memoir: part therapy, part chronicle

Things I've Been Silent About is a kind of companion volume to Nafisi's 2003 memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran ... giving us finely etched portraits of her tempestuous authoritarian mother, and her doting, unassertive father, who was a mayor Tehran under the Shah

A portrait of a family and a country that are at once alluring and deeply dysfunctional

A gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows how to use language both to settle scores and to seduce. Her family secrets pour forth in a flood of revelations of anger, humiliation and deceit

This is a remarkable insight into a fascinating period of history, and a touching portrait of astonishing tenacity and integrity in the face of adversity that few in the Western world could imagine

A balanced, lucid narrative; a rich, complex account of this crucial part of Iranian history

A powerful memoir of Nafisi's Iranian childhood, her mother and a homeland shattered by political revolution

Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic and has appeared on countless radio and television programmes. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.

In Azar Nafisi's personal story of growing up in Iran, she shares her memories of a life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution. 
 
Nafisi's intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerising fictions about herself, her family, and her past. But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed. When her father began to see other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother. Nafisi's complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal - as well as political, cultural, and social - injustices. 
 
Things I've Been Silent About is also a powerful historical picture of a family that spans the many periods of change leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. This unforgettable portrait of a woman, a family, and a troubled homeland is a new triumph from a modern master of the memoir.

Memories

From the bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran comes this brilliant memoir of a mother, a daughter, a family.

[Things I've Been Silent About] transports us to a world that is at once enchanting and threatening; it is a tale that mixes family feuds, politics and literature and holds our interest from the first to the last page. [It] may be read by some for its historic context. Others will be intrigued by what it says about the condition of women in the Islamic republic. To me, it was above all, a touching portrait of a troubled childhood in a family torn apart by a seductive father and an overbearing mother...But as the narrative unfolds against a complex and at times tragic political background, it is a political statement on Iran's modern history as much as a personal attempt to come to terms with a past by unravelling its secrets.

A beautiful and sensitive book... [Nafisi's] belief in the power of culture to transform lives and societies is inspiring.

A companion memoir to the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, this is Azar Nafisi's more personal account of growing up in Iran...an intriguing memoir.

This powerful memoir, from the author of the global hit Reading Lolita in Tehran, is a bewitching story of Azar's relationship with her brilliant, beautiful, romanticising and fictionalising mother. Set against the background of change before the Islamic Revolution, it is a complex, provocative story of family life, lies and loves - and of a desire to work out the past.

Nafisi proves a compelling, and moving, witness.

If you enjoyed the wonderful Reading Lolita in Tehran by this author, you have another treat in store.

Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children. 
 
www.azarnafisi.com

Azar Nafisi, author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.A girl's pain over family secrets; a young woman's discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval - these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir. 
 
Nafisi's intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerising fictions about herself, her family, and her past.But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed.Nafisi's father escaped into narratives of another kind, enchanting his children with classic tales like the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings.When her father began to see other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother.Nafisi's complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal - as well as political, cultural, and social - injustices. 
 
Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things I've Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a family that spans the many periods of change leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79.It is, finally, a deeply personal reflection on women's choices, and how Azar Nafisi found the inspiration for a different kind of life.This unforgettable portrait of a woman, a family, and a troubled homeland is a stunning book that readers will embrace, a new triumph from an author who is a modern master of the memoir.

Azar Nafisi

Playful, sombre and tender, Nafisi's character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate.

Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction.

We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential.

A lovely book: sharp in observation and wholly readable.

An arresting read … striking and utterly persuasive

A moving and convincing case for the necessity of literature

The book is a triumph … Most of all, I admire Nafisi’s bravery in challenging the commercialisation of America’s cultural and educational life … Nafisi’s sustained critique of trends in the American higher education system has a lot to say to UK readers and academics as well. Overall, the project is clever and poignant and steers clear of preachiness or schmaltz. But perhaps more impressive is the fact that although this is ostensibly a book about reading, Nafisi covers so many different aspects of life: morality, loneliness, coffee shops, technology, suicide, race, gender. In the end, the republic of imagination is not ‘about’ anything: what it comes down to is a single question. How should we live – as a society and as individuals?

From the author of the bestselling memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran comes a powerful and passionate case for the vital role of fiction today. 
 
Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her million-copy bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating follow-up, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling and utterly original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. 
 
Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her at a reading, she energetically responds to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favourite novels, she invites us to join her as citizens of her 'Republic of Imagination', a country where the villains are conformity, and orthodoxy and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.

Azar Nafisi

Praise for The Republic of Imagination

Playful, sombre and tender, Nafisi's character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate.

Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction.

We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential.

Playful, sombre and tender, Nafisi's character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate.

Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction.

We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential.

Playful, sombre and tender, Nafisi's character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate.

Resonant and deeply affecting . . . an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction.

We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential.

Books by Azar Nafisi

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