Monster

"Whoever fights monsters," Nietzsche had said, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafsi

Secret

Upsilamba become part of our increasing repository of coded words and expressions, a repository that grew over time until gradually we had created a secret language of our own. That word became a symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy, the tingle in the spine Nabokov expected his reader to feel in the art of reading fiction; it was a sensation that separated the good readers, as he called them, from the ordinary ones. It also became the code word that opened the secret cave of remembrance.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafsi

Stranger

I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home." I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafsi

Empathy

A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic -- not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels -- the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafsi

Dreams

Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Fairy Tale

Every fairytale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairytale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present there is an affirmation of the life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. This is why we love Madame Bovary and cry for Emma, why we greedily read Lolita as our heart breaks for its small, vulgar, poetic and defiant orphaned heroine.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafsi

Reading Lolita in Tehran Review

I loved Reading Lolita in Tehran. It was beautifully written. I could really imagine the characters and land. I loved the way she mixed her history, Tehran's history, and literary analysis together. I felt I learned so much about Tehran and various authors all at the same time.