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Azar Nafisi

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Iranian-American writer and professor
Azar Nafisi
Nafisi at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.Nafisi at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
BornPersian: آذر نفیسی
(1948-12-01) 1 December 1948 (age 76)
Tehran, Pahlavi Iran
OccupationWriter, professor
LanguageEnglish
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Oklahoma
Notable worksReading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Notable awards2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award (Booksense), Persian Golden Lioness Award

Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی; born 1948) is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008.

Nafisi has held several academic leadership roles, including director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.

She is the niece of a famous Iranian scholar, fiction writer and poet Saeed Nafisi. Azar Nafisi is best known for her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 117 weeks, and has won several literary awards, including the 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense.

In addition to Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi has authored, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books and That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile. Her newest book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published March 8, 2022.

Early life and education

Nafisi was born in Tehran, Iran. She is the daughter of Nezhat and Ahmad Nafisi, the former mayor of Tehran from 1961 to 1963. He was the youngest man ever appointed to the post at that time. In 1963, her mother was a member of the first group of women elected to the National Consultative Assembly.

Nafisi was raised in Tehran, but when she was thirteen, she moved to Lancaster, England, to finish her studies. She then moved to Switzerland before returning to Iran briefly in 1963. She completed her degree in English and American literature and received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.

Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution and taught English literature at the University of Tehran. In 1981, she was expelled from the university for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil. Years later, during a period of liberalization, she began teaching at Allameh Tabataba'I University. In 1995, Nafisi sought to resign from her position, but the university did not accept her resignation. After repeatedly not going to work, they eventually expelled her, but refused her ability to resign.

From 1995 to 1997, Nafisi invited several female students to attend regular meetings at her house every Thursday morning. They discussed their place as women within post-revolutionary Iranian society. They studied literary works, including some considered "controversial" by the regime, such as Lolita alongside other works such as Madame Bovary. She also taught novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen, attempting to understand and interpret them from a modern Iranian perspective.

After staying in Iran for 18 years after the Revolution, Nafisi returned to the United States of America on June 24, 1997, and continues to reside there today.

Literary and academic work

External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Nafisi on Reading Lolita in Tehran, June 8, 2003, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Nafisi on Reading Lolita in Tehran, August 3, 2004, C-SPAN
video icon After Words interview with Nafisi on Things I've Been Silent About, February 28, 2009, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Nafisi on The Republic of Imagination, November 23, 2014, C-SPAN

In addition to her books, Nafisi has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Her cover story, "The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution's Woman Problem," published in The New Republic (February 22, 1999) has been reprinted in several languages. She also wrote the new introduction to the Modern Library Classics edition of Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, as well as the introduction to Iraj Pezeshkzad's My Uncle Napoleon, published by Modern Library (April 2006). She has published a children's book (with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi) BiBi and the Green Voice (translated into Italian, as BiBi e la voce verde, and Hebrew).

She served as director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.

In 2003, Nafisi published Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. The book describes her experiences as a secular woman living and working in the Islamic Republic of Iran right after the Revolution. In 2008, Nafisi authored a memoir about her mother titled Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter.

On October 21, 2014, Nafisi authored The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, in which using The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt, and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, as well as the writings of James Baldwin and many others, Nafisi responds to an Iranian reader that questioned whether Americans care about or need their literature.

In 2019, the English translation of That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile was published by Yale University Press. Nafisi's forthcoming book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times will be published on March 8, 2022.

Nafisi has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, the human rights of Iranian women and girls and the important role they play in the change process for pluralism and open society in Iran. She has been consulted on issues related to Iran and human rights by policy makers and various human rights organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere. She is also involved in promoting not just literacy but of reading books with universal literary value. In 2011, she was awarded the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation International Thought and Humanities Award for her "determined and courageous defense of human values in Iran and her efforts to create awareness through literature about the situation women face in Islamic society".

She also received the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Susquehanna University (2019), Pomona College (2015), Mt. Holyoke College (2012), Seton Hill University (2010), Goucher College (2009), Bard College (2007), Rochester University (2005) and Nazareth College. In 2018, she was named a Georgetown University/Walsh School of Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow.

Critical acclaim

Nafisi's books have received critical acclaim from authors, publishing houses, and newspapers.

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Michiko Kakutani described Reading Lolita in Tehran in The New York Times Book Review as "resonant and deeply affecting… an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction-- on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual". Stephen Lyons for USA Today called the book "an inspiring account of an insatiable desire for intellectual freedom in Iran", and Publishers Weekly said of Reading Lolita, "This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three." Kirkus Reviews called Reading Lolita, "A spirited tribute both to the classics of world literature and to resistance against oppression."

Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaids Tale, reviewed Nafisi's book for the Literary Review of Canada, stating that, "Reading Lolita in Tehran is both a fascinating account of how she arrived at this belief and a stunning dismissal of it. All readers should read it. As for writers, it reminds us, with great eloquence, that our words may travel farther and say more than we could ever guess when we wrote them."

Things I've Been Silent About (2008)

After reviewing Things I've Been Silent About, The New York Times Book Review called Nafisi "a gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows how to use the language both to settle scores and to seduce". Kirkus Reviews called the book "an immensely rewarding and beautifully written act of courage, by turns amusing, tender and obsessively dogged".

The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (2014)

Iranian French novelist Marjane Satrapi's review of The Republic of Imagination, says, "We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi's Republic of Imagination. Without imagination, there are no dreams; without dreams, there is no art; without art, there is nothing. Her words are essential."

Kirkus Reviews said the book is "a passionate argument for returning to key American novels to foster creativity and engagement… Literature writes Nafisi, is deliciously subversive because it fires the imagination and challenges the status quo… Her literary exegesis lightly moves through her experience as a student, teacher, friend, and new citizen. Touching on myriad examples, from L. Frank Baum to James Baldwin, her work is poignant and informative."

Jane Smiley wrote in The Washington Post that Nafisi "finds the essence of the American experience, filtered through narratives not about exceptionalism or fabulous success, but alienation, solitude and landscape". Laura Miller of Salon wrote that "No one writes better or more stirringly about the way books shape a reader's identity, and about the way that talking books with good friends becomes integral to how we understand the books, our friends and ourselves.

She appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and PBS NewsHour to promote the book.

That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile (2019)

American literary critic Gary Saul Morson described That Other World as "somewhere between a first-person encounter with literature and a critical study; this book reminds us of how meaningful literature can be".

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times (2022)

Publishers Weekly authored a starred review of Nafisi's forthcoming Read Dangerously, calling it a "stunning look at the power of reading" and characterizing Nafisi's prose as "razor-sharp". The Progressive Magazine printed that Read Dangerously lives up to its audacious title, demonstrating the subversive and transformative power of literature. It should start many a book-based conversation among the living and the dead."

Criticism

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (January 2014)

In a 2003 article for The Guardian, Brian Whitaker criticized Nafisi for working for the public relations firm Benador Associates which he argued promoted the neo-conservative ideas of "creative destruction" and "total war".

In 2004, Christopher Hitchens wrote that Nafisi had dedicated Reading Lolita in Tehran to Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and a principal architect of the Bush Doctrine. Hitchens had stated that Nafisi was good friends with Wolfowitz and several other key figures in the Bush administration. Nafisi later responded to Hitchen's comments, neither confirming nor denying the claim.

In a critical article in the academic journal Comparative American Studies, titled "Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran", University of Tehran literature professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi states that "Nafisi constantly confirms what orientalist representations have regularly claimed". He also claimed that she "has produced gross misrepresentations of Iranian society and Islam and that she uses quotes and references which are inaccurate, misleading, or even wholly invented."

John Carlos Rowe, Professor of the Humanities at the University of Southern California, states that: "Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) is an excellent example of how neo-liberal rhetoric is now being deployed by neo-conservatives and the importance they have placed on cultural issues." He also states that Nafisi is "amenable.. to serving as a non-Western representative of a renewed defense of Western civilization and its liberal promise, regardless of its historical failures to realize those ends."

Hamid Dabashi: criticisms and counter-criticisms

In 2006, Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi, in an essay published in the Cairo-based, English-language paper Al-Ahram (Dabashi's criticism of Nafisi became a cover story for an edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education) compared Reading Lolita in Tehran to "the most pestiferous colonial projects of the British in India", and asserted that Nafisi functions as a "native informer and colonial agent" whose writing has cleared the way for an upcoming exercise of military intervention on the Middle East. He also labeled Nafisi as a "comprador intellectual," a comparison to the "treasonous" Chinese employees of mainland British firms, who sold out their country for commercial gain and imperial grace. In an interview Z magazine, he classed Nafisi with the U.S. soldier convicted of mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib: "To me, there is no difference between Lynndie England and Azar Nafisi." Finally, Dabashi stated that the book's cover image (which appears to be two veiled teenage women reading Lolita in Tehran) is in fact, in a reference to the September 11 attacks, "Orientalised pedophilia" designed to appeal to "the most deranged Oriental fantasies of a nation already petrified out of its wits by a ferocious war waged against the phantasmagoric Arab/Muslim male potency that has just castrated the two totem poles of U.S. empire in New York."

Critics like Dabashi have accused Nafisi of having close relations with neoconservatives. Nafisi responded to Dabashi's criticism by stating that she is not, as Dabashi claims, a neoconservative, that she opposed the Iraq war, and that she is more interested in literature than politics. In an interview, Nafisi stated that she has never argued for an attack on Iran and that democracy, when it comes, should come from the Iranian people (and not from US military or political intervention). She added that while she is willing to engage in "serious argument...The polarized debate isn't worth my time." She said she did not respond directly to Dabashi because "You don't want to debase yourself and start calling names." In the acknowledgements she makes in Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi writes of Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis as "one who opened the door". Nafisi, who opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, rejects such accusations as "guilt by association", noting that she has both "radical friends" and "conservative friends." Ali Banuazizi, the co-director of Boston College’s Middle East studies program, the co-director of Boston College's Middle East studies program, stated that Dabashi's article was very "intemperate" and that it was "not worth the attention" it had received. Christopher Shea of The Boston Globe argued that while Dabashi spent "several thousand words... eviscerating the book," his main point was not about the specific text but the book's black-and-white portrayal of Iran.

Writing in The New Republic, Marty Peretz sharply criticized Dabashi, and rhetorically asked, "Over what kind of faculty does Lee Bollinger preside?" In an article posted on Slate.com, author Gideon Lewis-Kraus described Dabashi's article as "a less-than-coherent pastiche of stock anti-war sentiment, strategic misreading, and childish calumny" and that Dabashi "insists on seeing as political perfidy" which allows him "to preserve his fantasy that criticizing Nafisi makes him a usefully engaged intellectual." Robert Fulford sharply criticized Dabashi's comments in the National Post, arguing that "Dabashi's frame of reference veers from Joseph Stalin to Edward Said. Like a Stalinist, he tries to convert culture into politics, the first step toward totalitarianism. Like the late Edward Said, he brands every thought he dislikes as an example of imperialism, expressing the West's desire for hegemony over the oppressed (even when oil-rich) nations of the Third World." Fulford added that "While imitating the attitudes of Said, Dabashi deploys painful clichés." Firoozeh Papan-Matin, the Director of Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, stated that Dabashi's accusation that Nafisi is promoting a "'kaffeeklatsch' worldview... callously ignores the extreme social and political conditions that forced Nafisi underground." Papan Matin also argued that "Dabashi's attack is that whether Nafisi is a collaborator with the " was not relevant to the legitimate questions outlined in her book.

Works

  • Nafisi, Azar. "Images of Women in Classical Persian Literature and the Contemporary Iranian Novel." The Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Ed. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994. 115–30.
  • Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels (1994).
  • Nafisi, Azar. "Imagination as Subversion: Narrative as a Tool of Civic Awareness." Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation. Ed. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997. 58–71.
  • "Tales of Subversion: Women Challenging Fundamentalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran." Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women (1999).
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003).
  • Things I've Been Silent About (Random House, 2008).
  • The Republic of Imagination (Random House, 2014).
  • "Foreword," Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics, 2014).
  • That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile (Yale University Press, 2019). Translated from Persian by Lotfali Khonji.
  • "Foreword", Shahnameh (Penguin Random House, Dick Davis, 2016)
  • Afterword to Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt (Signet Classics, 2015)
  • Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times (Dey Street Books, 2022)

Notes

  1. Following eighth grade, Nafisi's parents sent her to England for schooling from 1961 to 1963. Nafisi 2010, chapter 8, pp. 69-70; chapter 13, p. 115

References

  1. "Moving stories: Azar Nafisi". BBC News. Middle East. 2 January 2004. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  2. Iranian-American author lectures at the Spanish National Library Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "About Azar". Azar Nafisi. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  4. "StevenBarclayAgency". Barclayagency.com. Archived from the original on 2015-03-29. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  5. "Yale University Office of Public Affairs". Opa.yale.edu. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  6. "Chatting Up A Storm with Claudia Cragg : Azar Nafisi --Talking of 'Lolita', 'Things I've Been Silent About' and the "Sarah Palins/Hilary Clintons of Iran..."". Ccragg123.libsyn.com. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  7. "The Republic of Imagination Classics – Penguin Classics – Because what you read matters. – Penguin Group (USA)". www.penguin.com. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  8. ^ "That Other World | Yale University Press". yalebooks.yale.edu. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
  9. "Read Dangerously". HarperCollins. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  10. "Azar Nafisi's Interactive Family Tree | Finding Your Roots | PBS". Finding Your Roots. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  11. "Nezhat Nafisi", Misplaced Pages, 2022-02-04, retrieved 2022-03-03
  12. "Voices from the Gaps". Conservancy.umn.edu. hdl:11299/164018. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  13. "BBC NEWS | Middle East | Moving stories: Azar Nafisi". News.bbc.co.uk. 2 January 2004. Retrieved 2017-02-09.
  14. ^ "Reading Lolita in Tehran". American Federation of Teachers. 2014-08-08. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  15. "About Azar". Azar Nafisi. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  16. Wasserman, Elizabeth (7 May 2003). "The Fiction of Life". The Atlantic. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  17. Enright, Michael (December 30, 2018) . The Sunday Edition – December 30, 2018 (Radio interview). CBC. Event occurs at 1:27:00.
  18. Tolstoy, Leo; Nafisi, Azar (2010-07-09). Hadji Murad. Translated by Maude, Alymer (1st ed.). Modern Library.
  19. "My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad: 9780812974430 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  20. Nafisi, Azar (2014-10-21). The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (1st ed.). The Viking Press. ISBN 9780670026067.
  21. "The Republic of Imagination". Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2014-11-04.
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  23. "The Gabarron. 30th Anniversary > Awards > Awards > Awards 2011 > Winners > Thought and Humanities". gabarron.org. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  24. "Author Azar Nafisi Receives the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award at Smithsonian Associates Event". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  25. "SFS Announces 2018–2019 Centennial Fellows". SFS – School of Foreign Service – Georgetown University. 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  26. Kakutani, Michiko (2003-04-15). "Books of the Times; Book Study as Insubordination Under the Mullahs". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  27. "USATODAY.com – 'Lolita in Tehran' lifts a veil on oppression". usatoday30.usatoday.com. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  28. "Nonfiction Book Review: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, Author. Random $23.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-375-50490-7". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  29. "Reading Lolita in Tehran". Kirkus Reviews.
  30. Atwood, Margaret (September 2003). "The Book Lover's Tale". Literary Review of Canada. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  31. Sciolino, Elaine (2009-01-02). "Reading Mom and Dad in Tehran". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  32. "Things I've Been Silent Abpit". Kirkus Reviews.
  33. ^ "The Republic of Imagination by Azar Nafisi: 9780143127789 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  34. Smiley, Jane; Smiley, Jane (2014-10-20). "A celebration of American fiction from the author of 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  35. Miller, Laura (20 October 2014). "Why this Iranian-born writer fears for America's soul". Salon. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  36. "Author Azar Nafisi Interview, Part 1 | Video | Late Night with Seth Meyers | NBC". Archived from the original on 2015-05-29. Retrieved 2014-11-04.
  37. "Late Night With Seth Meyers". Hulu. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  38. "Azar Nafisi views American society through its literature in 'Republic of Imagination'". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  39. "Nonfiction Book Review: Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi. Dey Street, $26.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-06294-736-9". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  40. Lueders, Bill (2022-03-02). "A Life Well Read". Progressive.org. Retrieved 2022-03-05.
  41. Whitaker, Brian (2003-02-24). "Conflict and catchphrases". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-01-18.
  42. Doug Ireland (14 October 2004). "Azar Nafisi replies to Hitchens et. al". Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  43. Seyed Mohammed Marandi (2008). "Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran". Comparative American Studies. 6 (2): 179–189. doi:10.1179/147757008x280768. S2CID 170912855.
  44. John Carlos Rowe, "Cultural Politics of the New American Studies", Open Humanities Press, University of Michigan Library, 2012, p.132
  45. Rowe 2012, 141.
  46. A Collision of Prose and Politics by Richard Byrne, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2006.
  47. "Reading Lolita at Columbia". www.canada.com. Archived from the original on 8 February 2007. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  48. Young, Cathy. "Women and Islam". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 5 January 2019.
  49. ^ Pawn of the Neocons? by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Slate.com, November 30, 2006 (retrieved on October 21, 2009).
  50. ^ Book clubbed by Christopher Shea, The Boston Globe, October 29, 2006 (retrieved on October 21, 2009).
  51. ^ Reading Lolita at Columbia by Robert Fulford, National Post, November 6, 2006 (retrieved on October 21, 2009).
  52. A Collision of Prose and Politics by Richard Byrne, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2006.
  53. "Ali Banuazizi". Boston College. nd.
  54. http://depts.washington.edu/complit/people/faculty/papan/
  55. Reading & Misreading Lolita in Tehran Archived September 19, 2010, at the Wayback Machine by Dr. Firoozeh Papan-Matin, IslamOnline, 2007.
  56. "That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile". Yale University Press.

Bibliography

  • Nafisi, Azar. 2010 (2008). Things I've been silent about. Random House Trade Paperbacks. (Originally published 2008)

External links

Library resources
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