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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
4/5. Memoir of a woman literature professor chased out of formal teaching in Iran after the revolution who held private seminars in her home for seven female students to read banned western books.
This makes a haunting companion to Persian Mirrors: both portraits of Iran written by women, one an American, one a secular Iranian. The smothering force of the regimes restrictions on women is far more urgent and present in this book, to the point where I found it stressful to read. And she has to be so careful in what she says about who – most of the identities in this book are obscured. But she also has such a love of literature, and such a beautiful way of framing her life in the themes of books, that she almost made me care about Fitzgerald, etc.
4/5. Memoir of a woman literature professor chased out of formal teaching in Iran after the revolution who held private seminars in her home for seven female students to read banned western books.
This makes a haunting companion to Persian Mirrors: both portraits of Iran written by women, one an American, one a secular Iranian. The smothering force of the regimes restrictions on women is far more urgent and present in this book, to the point where I found it stressful to read. And she has to be so careful in what she says about who – most of the identities in this book are obscured. But she also has such a love of literature, and such a beautiful way of framing her life in the themes of books, that she almost made me care about Fitzgerald, etc.