About this product: An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.
Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen
About this product: What would you give up to protect your loved ones? Your life?
In her heartbreaking, triumphant, and elegantly written memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal Islamic Revolution.
In January 1982, Marina Nemat, then just sixteen years old, was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death for political crimes. Until then, her life in Tehran had centered around school, summer parties at the lake, and her crush on Andre, the young man she had met at church. But when math and history were subordinated to the study of the Koran and political propaganda, Marina protested. Her teacher replied, "If you don't like it, leave." She did, and, to her surprise, other students followed.
Soon she was arrested with hundreds of other youths who had dared to speak out, and they were taken to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Two guards interrogated her. One beat her into unconsciousness; the other, Ali, fell in love with her.
Sentenced to death for refusing to give up the names of her friends, she was minutes from being executed when Ali, using his family connections to Ayatollah Khomeini, plucked her from the firing squad and had her sentence reduced to life in prison. But he exacted a shocking price for saving her life -- with a dizzying combination of terror and tenderness, he asked her to marry him and abandon her Christian faith for Islam. If she didn't, he would see to it that her family was harmed. She spent the next two years as a prisoner of the state, and of the man who held her life, and her family's lives, in his hands.
Lyrical, passionate, and suffused throughout with grace and sensitivity, Marina Nemat's memoir is like no other. Her search for emotional redemption envelops her jailers, her husband and his family, and the country of her birth -- each of whom she grants the greatest gift of all: forgiveness.
About this product: In a direct, frank, and intimate exploration of Iranian literature and society, scholar, teacher, and poet Fatemeh Keshavarz challenges popular perceptions of Iran as a society bereft of vitality and joy. Her fresh perspective on present day Iran provides a rare insight into this rich but virtually unknown culture alive with artistic expression.
Keshavarz introduces readers to two modern Iranian women writers whose strong and articulate voices belie the stereotypical perception of Iranian women as voiceless victims in a country of villains. She follows with a lively critique of the best-selling Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which epitomizes what Keshavarz calls the "New Orientalist narrative"—marred by stereotype and prejudice more often tied to current geopolitical conflicts than to an understanding of Iran.
Blending in firsthand glimpses of her own life—from childhood memories in 1960s Shiraz to her present life as a professor in America—Keshavarz paints a portrait of Iran depicting both cultural depth and intellectual complexity. With a scholar's expertise and a poet's hand, she helps amplify the powerful voices of contemporary Iranians and leads readers toward a deeper understanding of the country's past and present.
With more than half its population under twenty years old, Iran is one of the world's most youthful nations. The Iranian state characterizes its youth population in two ways: as a homogeneous mass, "an army of twenty millions" devoted to the Revolution, and as alienated, inauthentic, Westernized consumers who constitute a threat to the society. Much of the focus of the Islamic regime has been on ways to protect Iranian young people from moral hazards and to prevent them from providing a gateway for cultural invasion from the West. Iranian authorities express their anxieties through campaigns that target the young generation and its lifestyle and have led to the criminalization of many of the behaviors that make up youth culture.
In this ethnography of contemporary youth culture in Iran's capital, Shahram Khosravi examines how young Tehranis struggle for identity in the battle over the right to self-expression. Khosravi looks closely at the strictures confronting Iranian youth and the ways transnational cultural influences penetrate and flourish. Focusing on gathering places such as shopping centers and coffee shops, Khosravi examines the practices of everyday life through which young Tehranis demonstrate defiance against the official culture and parental dominance. In addition to being sites of opposition, Khosravi argues, these alternative spaces serve as creative centers for expression and, above all, imagination. His analysis reveals the transformative power these spaces have and how they enable young Iranians to develop their own culture as well as individual and generational identities. The text is enriched by examples from literature and cinema and by livid reports from the author's fieldwork.
About this product: Imagine...Having to hide a satellite dish for fear of being arrested and thrown in prison,having to hide your face with a veil,your body with a robe,your head with a scarf,and God help you if a couple of loose strands of hair are sticking out. Imagine living under such a strict regime that a woman can not walk down the street with a man who is not her husband,father or brother,of having to scramble to different tables in a restaurant where a raid is going on, if you are sitting with a man who is just a friend. Imagine being subjected to body searches for no reason, of being jailed and quite possibly executed for having an opinion not accepted by that regime.Imagine the books you love, great and classic literature by Nabokov,Austen,James,and Fitzgerald, hard to come by and considered evil propaganda. And if fearing what your own countrymen can do to you is not enough, now imagine all that, with bombs going off constantly for years, landing so close they flatten your neighbors house and kill everyone in it. This was everyday life, a battleground of fear from all sides, for professor and intellectual Azar Nafisi. She only wanted to read, teach and discuss her favorite works of fiction.
Those are just a few of the injustices and life threatening situations, described in "Reading Lolita In Tehran".
After refusing to wear a veil to her job as a teacher of Literature, sticking to her own agenda of books considered controversial, Nafisi formed her own little group of women to study the great books mentioned above. She considered them "her girls", like an Iranian Miss Jean Brodie. They discussed the great works of Lolita, The Great Gatsby(this one was put on trial by her class at the University - imagine putting Gatsby on trial!), Pride and Prejudice among others, as they met in secret at Nafisi's home sans the robes and veils revealing their jeans and bright colored T-shirts, along with their inner most thoughts. They saw themselves as the heroines of the fiction they read. They discussed their sometimes unimaginable situations,their deep faith,the deaths of their friends, and the political times they lived in.
Azar Nafisi writes of how this group came to be, how these young women defied authority by studying unacceptable fiction. The girls themselves each have quite a background and stories of chilling experiences. Considering themselves lucky for only getting 5 years in prison for expressing their opinions instead of death in some cases.You can't help but feel a bond with each one of them. Nafisi also takes us back to the years before the group. She writes of life of in the "Islamic Republic of Iran",of teaching at the University of Tehran, and the extreme authoritative figures that ruled. Her writing seems to go off on tangents and some times it is a while before we are brought back full circle to the point, but I have to say, that every word she writes seems important to this story, and well worth reading through. She brilliantly interweaves the theme and characters of the books with the way of life in Iran.
This book left me deep in thought about the things I read in it. It was an up close and personal look at life we've heard about, but always seemed so far away. It not only touched me deeply and emotionally but I learned so much about the history and politics of the country as well. It certainly made me appreciate my own life much more.
Highly recommended read for everyone, and may be an especially deep discussion for book club groups.This edition has questions for discussion included.
It is quite a bit to absorb, but one that I will read again someday...Enjoy the read...Laurie
About this product: On a whim I picked up this book and I read it cover to cover without stopping. I couldn't get enough of Marina's story and my heart jerked for the pain she and her friends suffered just for standing up and saying they didn't agree with the Tehran government. I was stunned at the stories of the young women jailes for small things (in the eyes of an American) but huge crimes in the eyes of the religious minded goverments. I ended the book wanting to hear more.
About this product: Taking on Tehran provides concrete solutions to the emerging Iranian global threat. The aggressive policy recommendations call for a multidimensional confrontation and containment of Iran with a proactive move toward regime change. The book offers practical, achievable guidance to policy makers and unique insight for students into how foreign policy is really made. Published in cooperation with the American Foreign Policy Council.
About this product: Both a love story and a reporter’s first draft of history, Honeymoon in Tehran is a stirring, trenchant, and deeply personal chronicle of two years in the maelstrom of Iranian life.
In 2005, Azadeh Moaveni, longtime Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, returns to Iran to cover the rise of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As she documents the firebrand leader’s troublesome entry onto the world stage, Moaveni richly portrays a society too often caricatured as the heartland of militant Islam. Living and working in Tehran, she finds a nation that openly yearns for freedom and contact with the West, but whose economic grievances and nationalist spirit find a temporary outlet in Ahmadinejad’s strident pronouncements. Mingling with underground musicians, race car drivers, young radicals, and scholars, she explores the cultural identity crisis and class frustration that pits Iran’s next generation against the Islamic system.
And then the unexpected happens: Azadeh falls in love with a young Iranian man and decides to get married and start a family in Tehran. Suddenly, she finds herself navigating an altogether different side of Iranian life. Preparing to be wed by a mullah, she sits in on a government marriage prep class where young couples are instructed to enjoy sex. She visits Tehran’s bridal bazaar and finds that the Iranian wedding has become an outrageously lavish–though often still gender-segregated–production. When she becomes pregnant, she must prepare to give birth in an Iranian hospital, at the same time observing her friends’ struggles with their young children, who must learn to say one thing at home and another at school.
Despite her busy schedule as a wife and mother, Azadeh continues to report for Time on Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West and Iranians’ dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad’s heavy-handed rule. But as women are arrested on the street for “immodest dress” and the authorities unleash a campaign of intimidation against journalists, the country’s dark side reemerges. This fundamentalist turn, along with the chilling presence of “Mr. X,” the government agent assigned to mind her every step, forces Azadeh to make the hard decision that her family’s future lies outside Iran.
Powerful and poignant, fascinating and humorous Honeymoon in Tehran is the harrowing story of a young woman’s tenuous life in a country she thought she could change.
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