Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Each of the four parts of Reading Lolita in Tehran places a special emphasis on a particular writer of English literature. All four of Nafisi’s selections illuminate key themes and ideas contained in her memoir.

Vladimir Nabokov is unique amongst Nafisi’s chosen authors in the sense that he was Russian, not Anglo, by birth, and started writing literature in English only later in his career. Nabokov was born in 1899, at a time when Russia was still ruled by the Romanov Tsars, who ruled until the 1917 Russian Revolution. His parents were nobles and he was raised in comfortable, wealthy surroundings in St. Petersburg. Nabokov began writing during his teenaged years, publishing his first poetry collection in 1916, when he was about 17 years old.

The smooth trajectory of Nabokov’s early years ended abruptly with the Russian Revolution and the installation of the Soviet regime. Nabokov fled with his family to England, where he enrolled in the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1922. Nabokov then moved several times, spending many years in Berlin and France before settling in the United States in the early 1940s. He taught at several US universities until the success of Lolita (1955) enabled him to retire from teaching. He relocated to Switzerland in 1961, where he continued to live and write until his death in 1977. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi interprets Nabokov’s works as containing fundamental insights into the nature of totalitarianism and various forms of oppression.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota in 1896, although he spent several of his formative years in New York state. He attended Princeton University, where he moved in literary circles and formed several important friendships, including one with the future literary critic and writer, Edmund Wilson. After a failed love affair, Fitzgerald enlisted in the US Army in 1917, when World War I was ongoing. While hoping to be deployed to Europe, Fitzgerald met a rich young woman named Zelda. Fitzgerald was considered unsuitable for Zelda due to his lowly economic standing, and he felt immense pressure to become successful enough to marry her. In 1920, his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, launched Fitzgerald to literary fame, and he married Zelda later that same year. Fitzgerald’s novels would soon become a defining feature of “the Jazz Age” of the 1920s, embodying the dramatic cultural and social shifts taking place in American society at that time. His most famous work, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925. Fitzgerald’s life took a dark turn in the 1930s, when his writing fell out of favor and Zelda began to experience mental health conditions. Zelda ended up in a psychiatric hospital while Fitzgerald had alcoholism and struggled to continue writing, with most of his energies focused on screenwriting in Hollywood. He died in 1940 at the age of 44.

The Great Gatsby plays an important role in Part 2 of Reading Lolita in Tehran. The students in one of Nafisi’s literature classes stage a mock trial of the novel for apparent moral laxity. For Nafisi, the novel’s protagonist represents the dangers of attempting to reshape reality to resemble dreams.

Henry James was born into a wealthy family in New York City in 1843. During his childhood, he and his family spent time traveling in the UK and Europe. James briefly attended Harvard Law School before turning his attentions to literature, writing for various American magazines and publishing his first novel, Watch and Ward, in 1878. James returned to Europe and settled in London in 1876, where he would remain for the rest of his life. His greatest literary flowering occurred during the final two decades of his life, during which he wrote his most famous works, The Turn of the Screw (1898), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Golden Bowl (1904). His final years were overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which left James feeling saddened and conflicted. He died in 1916 at the age of 72. James and his works Daisy Miller (1879) and Washington Square (1880) form the literary centerpieces for Part 3 of Reading Lolita in Tehran, with Nafisi using James as a lens for exploring questions of female agency and the experience of living through wartime.

Jane Austen, the author Part 4 is named for, is one of the most famous English novelists. She was born in 1775. Her father was a Reverend in the Church of England, and her upbringing was comfortable but unexceptional. Her father encouraged her to become educated and allowed her to read widely; Austen had begun writing fictional works by her early teens. Although she received a marriage proposal in 1802, Austen rejected the offer, remaining single and childless throughout her life.

She and her also-single sister, Cassandra, ended up living with one of their brothers, Edward, at Chawton. The novels published during her lifetime were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816), all of which were published anonymously. Her works were popular, counting even the Prince Regent (later King George IV) amongst their admirers. After Austen’s death in 1817, two other novels were published posthumously that same year: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Nafisi uses the figure of Austen—and especially Pride and Prejudice—to reflect on the connections between the personal and the political in the lives of women, with Nafisi examining how totalitarian regimes affect even the most personal aspects of life.