The author, Azar Nafisi, and several of her girl students who formed the clandestine book discussion group to discuss some of the forbidden classics in the revolutionary Islamic Iran were relating themselves to Lolita where there was a Humbert in their lives in one form or another, restricting the freedom of their lives in some way and taking control over them in a manner that was loathed by them all. The Humbert could take any form, from the uncle of one of the girls who tried to molest her in her childhood to the ‘Philosopher-King’ Ayatollah himself who, according to the author, tried to build up his dream kingdom by imposing the strictest rules and restricting the freedom of the subjects, especially women. In a country devastated by the so called revolution and a war with the neighbouring country, the only way these women could find to live the lives of their dreams was to turn to fiction, because they felt that their lives of freedom could exist only in their minds, in a world of imagination.
The book tries to tell us about the power of imagination and fiction. As the group of women crazy for fiction reads the fictional classics by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Austen and James, we realize how their true lives are intertwined with the stories they discuss. The book is part memoir and part literary criticism. The book helps you look at the art of fiction in a quite different way. It could perhaps help you discover certain very valuable aspects of fiction that used to remain hidden from you so far.
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