Disappointing Read

Azar Nafisi’s book “Reading Lolita in Tehran” came highly recommended to me because of my admiration of “The Kite Runner”, but I can't honestly say I enjoyed it. It wasn't quite what I expected. I guess I expected more of a traditional memoir, with details about Tehran and Iran after the Islamic revolution. There are some of these details in the book, and they do shed some illumination on what life in Iran was like during the 1980's and 90's.

Something about the woman annoys me so much that I felt at times she was using this book as a means for her to come to terms with herself and how her own life had changed rather than enlighten the public of the struggles in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I must say that this book is a Western biased account of the middle east and addresses political and social structure of Iranian society in an awfully biased way. To me, Nafisi isn't really "native". She might be Iranian, but where has she been for most of her life is in USA.

One interesting point about her "veil game": After 15 years teaching in Iranian Universities and of course wearing veil, Nafisi suddenly discovered that "University is not a grocery store" and she shouldn’t wear veil!

I consider myself so patient that I could go on till the very last page.