This is a book by Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor, about her experiences teaching in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Much of the book centers around the class on "forbidden Western classics" (The Great Gatsby; Lolita; etc.) that Nafisi teaches to a small group of female Iranian students. The author very eloquently weaves in themes from the books that her class reads with the changing Iranian culture and also with what is going on in their personal lives. The book is divided into four sections - each section dealing with a different time period and having a different theme. My favorite section, Gatsby, is set right as the revolution is starting. Nafisi compares the "American dream" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby with the dream of the Iranian Revolution, and how this Iranian "dream" changed the lives of women in Iran. When one of her students gets really upset about the book because he says it condones adultery, they decide to hold a "trial" in their class - and they prosecute the book! I like Nafisi's conclusion ..."What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven."
When Nafisi returns to Iran years later after the revolution, she asks, "Who will pay for the snapshots of the murdered and the executed that we hid in our shoes and closets as we moved on to other things? ... Tell me, Mr. Bahri - or, to use that odd expression of Gatsby's, Tell me, old sport - what shall we do with all these corpses on our hands?"
This was a great book - but a bit slow for my taste. There were some parts that seemed to go on for longer than they needed to. But overall, it shared a lot that I didn't know about Iranian culture (despite all the Persian friends I have - shame on me!) and was a beautifully written story.
No comments:
Post a Comment