Reading Lolita in Tehran

I've been reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi. If you're familiar with some of the great literary classics (Pride and Prejudice, Lolita, Great Gatsby, etc.) then you'll enjoy this. I loved it less for the tie-ins between the literature and Iran during the revolution, and more for the insight into what Iran was like during the revolution.

A few years ago, I read "Honeymoon in Purdah" by Alison Wearing. I loved this book, but one thing struck me as unusual. The author, who poses as a women on her honeymoon with a male/non-romantic friend, relays again and again the feedback of Iranians living in Iran that stresses that the purdah is good. That Iran is good this way. That this is better than life under the Shah(this is a debate in itself, as I'm sure there are many that benefitted under the Shah who liked him, and many more who suffered under the Shah).

Azar Nafisi, at the time of printing her book, lived in the US and strikes me as a more progressive Iranian woman. Like many Iranians I knew who lived under the Shah (and now reside outside of Iran), they wanted a more open society than what Iran has become since the revolution.

Nafisi touches on the debate between leaving Iran to escape the tyrannical and corrupt government, or staying, because it is one's country, and one's duty to affect change. Oddly enough, most of the Iranians I've met (all outside of Iran) do not like the country it has become. And based on Wearing's book, one might conclude that there are many in Iran who do like the country as it is (those who live in Iran and think differently most likely don't announce it to an author). So, did all of those who had the means to escape the Iran they no longer knew, do so?

Check out the books. They're both worth a read.