BOOKPATHS

Iran and beyond

Erica Wagner interviews “Iranian academic and author” Azar Nafisi.

Such issues make the reader realise that the politics of Iran are not as black and white as they are often portrayed in the West - and indeed, Nafisi hopes that her book [Things I’ve Been Silent About] will offer a correction to that image. – from “’Information Exists; but Knowledge has Lessened’ Interview with Azar Nafisi,” by Erica Wagner, The Times

Iran

NPR’s Steve Inskeep chooses his three favorite books on modern Iran.

Iran

Hooman Majd considers The Iranian "Paradox" on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Iran

Trevor Hunnicutt talks with Anita Amirrezvani, whose book, The Blood of Flowers, “explores the life of a girl in 17th century Persia who is forced to work as a rugmaker when her father dies and she does not have a dowry.”

'It was a challenge of the imagination in terms of what the day-to-day life would have been,' she said. Amirrezvani visited Iran three times while writing the book to meet family and do research. Historical information appears in the book in small instances, such as the use of a comet as a symbol of disruption. That comet was described in a court history written hundreds of years ago.  – from “The Blood of Flowers Gives Voice to Iran, by Trevor Hunnicutt, San Francisco Chronicle

Iran

Terry Gross interviews Kasra Naji, whose new biography, Ahmadinejad: the Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader, “explains Ahmadinejad’s rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.”

Christina Patterson interviews poet Mimi Khalvati.

“When Khalvati was sent to boarding school at the age of six, she instantly forgot her Persian. She spent holidays with her classmates and only saw her mother ‘about every four years’. Her extremely touching letters to her mother, quoted in poems in her collection The Chine, were in English. It was only aged 19, when she went to live in Tehran, that she learnt to speak Farsi. When she returned there in her twenties, with the English husband she had met at drama school in London, she learnt more. She still speaks Farsi "with an English accent" and struggles to read it. Which, perhaps, is why the standard description of her as a ‘Persian poet’ provokes a wry smile that at times borders on a grimace.” – from “Interview: Labelled a ‘Persian poet’, Mimi Khalvati Owes as Much to the Isle of Wight as Iran,” by Christina Patterson, The Independent

Iran

Nahid Rachlin’s website introduces readers to her life and work. Born in Iran, Rachlin “came to the United States to attend college and stayed on.” As an Iranian-American, Rachlin’s memoir, Persian Girls (to be published in October); novels, Jumping Over Fire, Foreigner, Married to a Stranger, The Heart’s Desire; and short stories offer insight into “the diasporic life,” while also transporting readers to the landscape, culture, and politics of Iran. Her work encourages an understanding of Iran and Iranian-Americans at a critical time.

"I think of that one time she took Lily and me, when we were children, to Iran for a visit. We stayed in a big house in a village just outside of Tehran, an oasis at the edge of a desert. Mountains were visible in the distance and they changed color from rust to salmon to a deep blue. Wolves and jackals lived in the mountains. Next to the house was an orchard with a spring in the middle of it. Lily and I and other local children used to go to the orchard, pick fruit from the trees or swim in the stream running through it. At night we slept under mosquito nets in the courtyard where the stars and the moon were brighter than I had ever seen. I remember nightingales whistling at dawn, owls howling in the evening, and jackals shrieking in the middle of the night. Then there was the voice of the muezzin three times a day calling people to prayer." – from “Forget Me,” by Nahid Rachlin (Read the complete story on her website)

Iran

Listen to Akbar Ganji, “one of Iran’s most prominent champions of human rights and freedom of expression,” on PEN’s website.

BOOKPATH: Iran

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi (New York : Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003)

Azar Nafisi belives in fiction. A novel, she writes, "is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel." As Nafisi writes about Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jane Austen, and others, she intertwines the fictional lives they create with the very real lives of Iranians, especially the seven women who joined her each Thursday morning, for two years, to discuss literature. Even on Nafisi's darkest days in the Islamic Republic of Iran, readers sense fiction's power to encourage strength, self-respect, and survival. This beautiful, essential, book has much to teach, along with warnings for all of us who value freedom. Enter Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran at your own risk -- her wisdom is seductive and subversive.

Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to 'see' others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennett) as well as the worst of us (Humbert). We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others.

Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.... -- from Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi

Websites

Azar Nafisi's Dialogue Project
http://dialogueproject.sais-jhu.edu

Reading Guide
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/reading_lolita_in_tehran1.asp