The Iranian-American author, Azar Nafisi (b. 1955), reminisces about her experiences teaching English literature in Iran before, during and after the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). The book opens near the end of her sojourn in Tehran. A small group of young women, who have been friends since they were University students, gather in the author’s home to read and discuss English novels. They wear western clothes, remove their veils, and eat sweets. Some have been in prison. They conceal their simple purpose from fathers, husbands, brothers, because meeting to read Western fiction would be construed as an act of defiance.  

In four sections, two named for twentieth-century novels and two for nineteenth-century authors — “Lolita” “Gatsby” “James” and “Austen,” Nafisi constructs a series of flashbacks that describe the events of late 1970s to the 1990s in the inner and outer world of an academic woman. The books and writers used in the section headings have walk-on parts or starring roles that jar in this ostensibly alien context. Yet, they work surprisingly well for the women students, stimulating them to think in new ways about the situation in which they find themselves. Conversely, as the students assimilate the English and American writers into their world, we learn more about their Iran. 

Myriad details of moment, garb, color, and food, evoke the everyday “feel” of protests and atrocities that are known in the West only through journalist’s reports. The long descriptions contrast sharply with a relentless and probably deliberate lack of precision about several basic things. For example, the author withholds her age and the identity and the nature of her relationship with “my magician,” a greatly admired man –perhaps a lover or a teacher–who seems to exist on chocolate and philosophy.  

Possessives and the first-person singular are used liberally (“my students”) to remind us that this is one woman’s story—notwithstanding the solace, but barely developed presence, of a husband, two children, and a mother. The decision may have been made to protect personal privacy. But the result also conspires to build a narcissistic tone, as if the author marvels at her own creativity, attractiveness, resilience, survival, and escape.  

Some of the most engaging passages describe the male students’ difficulty with literature that they perceive to be immoral (for its sexual content or for the agency it assigns women). In the social climate, the young men are utterly unable to accept great writing on its own terms. One wonders how they would react to Nafisi’s own book and her portrayal of them. The wonderful device of a mock trial of Gatsby (pp. 120-136) challenges the students by going to the heart of the conflict of politics, religion, literature, and justice; it would work well as an excerpt and is worthy of emulation in our classrooms. The work deepens our understanding and complicates the impressions of Iran that are generated by a steady diet of news reports. 

In 2024, Reading Lolita in Tehran became a film directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis. 

Born into a privileged, Iranian family and educated in both England and the United States, Nafisi saw the great changes in her beloved country as the encroachment of a retrograde, unthinking tyranny, hostile to women and to reason. She moved to the United States in 1997 and became a citizen in 2008. She has served as a professor of English literature in several universities, holds at least nine honorary doctorates and numerous awards and prizes for her creative work. 

Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
Random House, New York 2003
347 pages

From the Vault:
In these times, certain works of literature seem to be as relevant to us now as when they were published — possibly more relevant than the times that they depict. From the vault of the now closed Literature, Arts and Medicine Database, we will pluck a few items for their power and timeliness.

Web photo by  ariyan Dv 

Cyrus aspires to be a poet but is drowning in self-pity and drug use. He wants more than anything to achieve renown and martyrdom and to die after having made a lasting mark in the world. Interwoven with these tragic human circumstances are antic elements that collide with this depressing narrative. The novel opens abruptly with a humorous but disconcerting encounter between Cyrus, who is working as a surrogate patient in an introduction to medicine class, and a student, who is clearly in the early stages of her education. Cyrus is having a bad day and cynically takes on the role of the difficult patient, nearly driving the student to tears. There is a zany episode when Cyrus and a friend take on a home maintenance and wood chopping job for a man who lives alone and who monitors their work wearing only his underwear.  

Dream sequences in which Cyrus receives guidance from figures ranging from Kareem Abdul Jabbar to a thinly disguised, now President Trump materialize without warning. An uncle, his mother’s older brother, passes through the story several times appearing as a figure draped in a black hooded cape and riding on horseback across the blood-drenched Iran-Iraq war battlefields. His mission is to reassure the dying soldiers that they will ascend to paradise. Yet, despite these disparate elements, the book has a powerful coherence and momentum. One of the most striking features of the book is its extraordinarily imaginative similes– “he was skinny in a scrawny way, not like a runner but like a mathematician who forgets to eat,” “the middle school teacher… offered him a racial slur, like a juicy orange they might peel together and share.” These phrases demand that you slow down the pace of your reading and take note of the author’s creativity.  

Engagement with language and its communicative limitations emerges as a key theme of Martyr!. Cyrus comments frequently on the arbitrariness of language and the terrifying consequences that can arise from the words we use. Akbar embeds this idea in his writing by implying that plain words alone are inadequate to capture the essence of things, and the only reliable way to convey meaning to readers is by creating vivid and arresting comparisons. The plot of the book takes off when Cyrus is encouraged by a friend to go to the Brooklyn Museum and visit a featured exhibit, DEATH-SPEAK. It consists of an artist who is dying of cancer sitting on a chair and talking with the visitors about death during the final weeks of her life. An unanticipated bond is quickly established between the artist named Orkideh and Cyrus. He feels compelled to return and speak with her over the next four days. Their conversation is genuine and moving. There is more to the artist and her art than meets Cyrus’ eye, and those unexpected twists drive the story to its blazing finish.  

What is one to make of this wholly original and emotionally charged novel? I will restrict myself to three thoughts that have had staying power after finishing the book a month ago. First, as mentioned above, Martyr! raises provocative questions about the limitations of language and our ability to communicate with one another. Cyrus (and Akbar) questions the capacity of words alone to express meaning, as if each of us has our own private language. If we can firmly ground our language with references to concrete, real life experiences, which is precisely what Akbar does with the beautiful and jarring similes that are interwoven into the entire book, then we may be able to convey meaning. That Akbar can introduce such a recondite idea, a variant of playing language games, into a best-selling novel is a feat worth noting.  

Second, there is a yearning to be healed that drives Cyrus’ quest. Martyrdom is the outer expression, but it is a quest for meaning that is the true driving force that motivates Cyrus to take healthy action in the novel. He attends a group therapy program and has a tough-minded supervisor to help him detox from his drug use. Ultimately, it is the new awareness that Cyrus gains about his parents that enables him to achieve psychological equanimity and peace of mind.  

Finally, what is the martyrdom that Cyrus longs for? He is not looking to wrap himself with explosives, kill the infidels, and gain entry to paradise. One could say that what he so desperately wants is lasting fame and renown for an act or artistic creation that will be seen as unique and cherished, that will survive after him, and that will keep his name eternally alive. The Book of Martyrs, a fictional collection of poems written by Cyrus that are interspersed in the text, could conceivably represent this hoped-for act of martyrdom. However, the ending of the novel suggests that Akbar may have a less explosive and more intimate notion of what martyrdom means. The knowledge that Cyrus gains over the course of the novel and his interactions with Orkideh spur him to finally achieve the martyrdom he seeks. His ultimate fate on the final page is actually a bit murky. But the vision that one is left with is that Cyrus has indeed achieved a life of meaning because it is a life of meaningful interpersonal connections.  

Martyr! 
Kaveh Akbar 
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024, pp 332 
Web image by Levi Meir Clancy