First-Year Reading Experience – 2004
The University of Montana—Missoula is pleased to announce author
Azar Nafisi’s work, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in
Books, as the title selected for the 2004 First-Year Reading
Experience.
Through a collection of events and activities—including a visit
by the author—incoming first-year students will have the opportunity
to explore this book with their peers, their professors, and the broader
campus community.
| Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books,
by Azar Nafisi. Random House: 2003. 384 pages. Available at The University
of Montana—Missoula At right: author Azar Nafisi |
 |
About the Memoir
"In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature." This calm statement opens a private chronicle that explores the lives of eight women living in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, during two years in the mid-1990s after the Islamic Revolution. These women represent diverse religious and political beliefs and backgrounds. Their discussions of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Jane Austen coincide with an array of tumultuous personal experiences during the reign of Khomeini.
The author, Azar Nafisi, was born in Iran and taught in the United States before her seclusion in Tehran. After her return to the United States, she again began teaching and is currently at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. "I left Tehran on June 24, 1997, for the green light that Gatsby once believed in."
Mona Simpson in The Atlantic Monthly wrote: “There are certain books by our most talented essayists…that…carry inside their covers the heat and struggle of a life’s central choice being made and the price being paid, while the writer tells us about other matters, and leaves behind a path of sadness and sparkling loss. Reading Lolita in Tehran is such a book.”
Sue Samson
Humanities Librarian
Contact the First-Year Experience Committee
Webpages: Merinda McLure, Education Librarian
Last updated: 22 June 2004