Honeyed Words: Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi · 20 October 2007

Picture of a Vegan Hummus and Tomato Pizza

There are times where I get the best kind of validation that I wasn’t adopted. In addition to having a flat spot on the back of her head exactly where I do, my dad’s cousin is a book lover and a food lover. When I visited her recently and offered to cook dinner, I mentioned that I might be posting about what I cooked. Normally I cook with a book in mind, but during pre-vacation rush I didn’t have one for this meal. She looked at the finished fare and said, “So what are we eating, Reading Lolita in Tehran?”

We weren’t, but I decided to take a good cue when I saw one. The book had been sitting on my shelf for months, and so I took it on vacation with me.

Reading "Lolita" in Tehran is written by a professor of literature who is dismissed from her university in Iran. She then holds private discussions in her home with a handpicked group of girls in Tehran. Throughout the book, the author explores the different ways in which living, and teaching, in Tehran shaped her life. Nafisi uses authors as bookmarks, first Nabakov, then Fitzgerald, James, and Austen. She vacillates between telling the story of her life and providing excellent insight into masterpieces of literatures. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a book lover’s book and like all books I’ve read about other books, it left me with a longer reading list than when I started.

Nafisi is one of those authors that writes as if she is speaking to you. She has a voice with a soft, firm, tone that invites your confidences and your compassion. The book is semi-autobiographical, in that Nafisi speaks of her own life with candor, but admits to changing the details of some of the other characters in order to protect them. There are several moving and poignant passages in which the reader is acquainted with personal horrors that took place during the Iranian revolution and the subsequent decades.

In a way, I came to feel that Nafisi may have been writing this book as the only apology she could give to the country she ultimately left. She admits there is much to love about Iran, but in the end she chose to leave it. Nafisi’s struggle will sound familiar to anyone who has walked away from a difficult person or relationship and the obvious conflicts that Nafisi faces in choosing what to include in her novel add to its strength.

I first became interested in this book after hearing this interview last year on NPR about the collection of stories Literature from the Axis of Evil and Other Enemy Nations. In it, Nafisi speaks on the importance of literature and of the people that live in the countries that President Bush labeled The Axis of Evil. I’m still waiting for a copy to come up on PBS, but I think that my appreciation of the collection of the stories will be enriched by reading Nafisi’s story first.

I wouldn’t have chosen pizza as the food for this novel, but I’m grateful that my cousin nudged me in the direction of reading it. It was a perfect way to start vacation, in contemplation of the spirit and the written word.

Recipe for this vegan pizza (along with a much better picture) can be found on Albion Cooks, one of the prettiest and tastiest vegetarian blogs out there. I highly recommend it for those who are thinking about adding some vegetarian food to their diet. When I made my pizza, I skipped the zahtar, substituted regular pesto for eggplant, and used roasted eggplant hummus. Quick, simple, and delicious, though I fear that when I hit up the Farmer’s Markets this weekend, heirloom tomatoes will be gone until next summer and so repeating this recipe will have to wait.