Voices struggling to be heard

I’m a voracious reader. Currently I am hooked to Reading Lolita in Tehran by noted Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi.

The book is a memoir of experiences courted by the writer-academic who returned to Iran during its three-year period of revolution from 1978-1981, and simultaneously lived and taught in the Islamic Republican nation before finally relocating to the US two decades later in 1997.

The story might pass off as a particular writer’s slice of biography but deep down is buried a hidden saga of women’s continuous fight and struggle to find their own voices and identity amidst a world dominated by male chauvinism.

Real life events are nicely braided with poignant stories of Nafisi’s seven book club members who are secretly drawn from her own set of female students namely, Mahshid, Yassi, Mitra, Nassrin, Azin, Sanaz and Manna. All of them meet at Nafisi’s house to take part in her privately conducted weekly literature class to debate and discuss works of Western literature, which was considered a forbidden fruit.

From Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial Lolita to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to James Joyce’s texts and Jane Austen’s Victorian novels, the adult world and content would thoroughly get consumed and re-interpreted through their readings and understandings under the tutelage of Nafisi.

In the wake of rampant misogyny plaguing our society at the moment, this novel could ideally touch the conscience of all and sundry.