Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafisi 2003
Finished: 4/19/17
This was delightful. I hadn't read any novels since Christmas time. This is literally a memoir outlined around four greats of the fiction cannon, so it was a perfect jump back in. The writing is top level and the narrative is intensely personal and consuming. There are passages that detail abuses during the Iranian revolution which were uncomfortable for me, but necessary for the work. My mom was reading the book during the fall election and had to stop because it was too much in combination with an impending terrifying national political situation.
What struck me was the power that Nafisi finds in reading the total cannon of authors. Nabokov and Austen are each the center of one of the four sections. I’ve read Lolita and Pride and Prejudice, and loved both of them, but i had never really considered that I would read through much more of either of these authors. The way that Nafisi employs analysis across the totality of their publications is exciting. Perhaps I would be learning this kind of approach if i was taking college English courses, but I have not.
Coming Next:
I found I already own a gargantuan collection of Austen, so I’m going to be taking a stab at that next, probably starting with Sense and Sensibility. I also found the family copy of Foucault’s Pendulum. My mom keeps telling me to wait until I’ve read more semiotics. I’ve gotten a smidgen of semiotics, but I've got to read it now because each time i read more on ciphers and code the book comes up and I don’t want to run into accidental spoilers if i do further research.
