Lolita Unveiled: Muslim Women's Take on a Scandalous Classic

Summary:

Confronting the tyrannies of our times through the transformative power of the novel.

Additional Credits and Funding:

narrator: Eileen M. Brady
engineer: Mike Simmons

Tones:

Engaging, Personal, Political

Language:

English

Description:

"'Lolita' Unveiled: Muslim Women's Take on a Scandalous Classic" is a dramatic radio essay that explores the impact of Azar Nafisi's best selling memoir, "Reading Lolita in Tehran," on our thinking about the precarious nature of democracy in the Middle East and here in the United States.
The news is filled with major stories about Iran: the purging of reformist candidates from national elections have ensured a hard line Parliament, in spite of the efforts of the winner of the Nobel Peace prize for 2003 Shirin Ebadi to argue for democratic process. Meanwhile, Azar Nafisi's memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, remains at the top of the New York Times best seller list where it has been described as " an eloquent brief on the transformative power of fiction." This piece examines the power of the novel to inspire democratic reasoning through free imaginings and also about the power of radical readings of novels to do the same. The listener learns about Dr. Nafisi's private classes in Tehran where veiled Muslim women met in secret and read and discussed Vladimir Nabokov's western novel, Lolita, finding it central to their abilities to imagine themselves as free agents. Included are author Azar Nafisi, Yassi ( one of Nafisi's Iranian graduate students), professional readings from the memoir, clips from Jeremy Iron's reading of Nabokov's Lolita and musical passages from contemporary Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim,

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