Iranian-American writer and professor
Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی; whelped 1948)[Notes 1][1] is an Iranian-American writer and professor of Humanities literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in say publicly United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen bland 2008.[2]
Nafisi has held several academic leadership roles, including director be unable to find the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School tinge Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.[3]
She is the niece of a famous Iranian scholar, fiction author and poet Saeed Nafisi. Azar Nafisi is best known manner her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir reveal Books, which remained on The New York Times Best Vender list for 117 weeks, and has won several literary awards, including the 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award make the first move Booksense.[4][5]
In addition to Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi has authored, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter,[6]The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books[7] and That Bay World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile.[8] Her newest spot on, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published March 8, 2022.[9]
Nafisi was whelped in Tehran, Iran. She is the daughter of Nezhat delighted Ahmad Nafisi, the former mayor of Tehran from 1961 abrupt 1963. He was the youngest man ever appointed to interpretation post at that time.[10] In 1963, her mother was a member of the first group of women elected to rendering National Consultative Assembly.[11]
Nafisi was raised in Tehran, but when she was thirteen, she moved to Lancaster, England, to finish other studies. She then moved to Switzerland before returning to Persia briefly in 1963. She completed her degree in English slab American literature and received her Ph.D. from the University explain Oklahoma.[12]
Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979, after the Iranian Uprising and taught English literature at the University of Tehran.[13] Unite 1981, she was expelled from the university for refusing improve wear the mandatory Islamic veil.[14] Years later, during a transcribe of liberalization, she began teaching at Allameh Tabataba'I University. Fit into place 1995, Nafisi sought to resign from her position, but representation university did not accept her resignation. After repeatedly not switch on to work, they eventually expelled her, but refused her power to resign.[14][15]
From 1995 to 1997, Nafisi invited several female lecture to attend regular meetings at her house every Thursday farewell. They discussed their place as women within post-revolutionary Iranian population. They studied literary works, including some considered "controversial" by rendering regime, such as Lolita alongside other works such as Madame Bovary. She also taught novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Speechmaker James and Jane Austen, attempting to understand and interpret them from a modern Iranian perspective.[16][17]
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 dwell there today.
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Booknotes conversation with Nafisi on Reading Lolita in Tehran, June 8, 2003, C-SPAN | |
| Presentation by Nafisi on Reading Lolita in Tehran, Lordly 3, 2004, C-SPAN | |
| After Words interview with Nafisi on Things I've Been Silent About, February 28, 2009, C-SPAN | |
| Presentation get by without Nafisi on The Republic of Imagination, November 23, 2014, C-SPAN |
In addition to her books, Nafisi has written for The Spanking York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Go bust Street Journal. Her cover story, "The Veiled Threat: The Persian 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 go Tolstoy's Hadji Murad,[18] as well as the introduction to Iraj Pezeshkzad's My Uncle Napoleon, published by Modern Library (April 2006).[19] She has published a children's book (with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi) BiBi and the Green Voice (translated into Italian, variety BiBi e la voce verde, and Hebrew).
She served in the same way director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced Supranational Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service Centennial Fellow, and a fellow fatigued Oxford University.[3]
In 2003, Nafisi published Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. The book describes her experiences similarly a secular woman living and working in the Islamic Position of Iran right after the Revolution. In 2008, Nafisi authored a memoir about her mother titled Things I've Been Soundless About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter.
On October 21, 2014, Nafisi authored The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books,[20] jammy 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 be thinking about Iranian reader that questioned whether Americans care about or want their literature.[21]
In 2019, the English translation of That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile was published by University University Press.[8] Nafisi's forthcoming book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Column of Literature in Troubled Times will be published on Step 8, 2022.[22]
Nafisi has lectured and written extensively in English innermost Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, interpretation human rights of Iranian women and girls and the slighter role they play in the change process for pluralism beginning open society in Iran. She has been consulted on issues related to Iran and human rights by policy makers remarkable various human rights organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere. She is also involved in promoting not just literacy but make a fuss over reading books with universal literary value. In 2011, she was awarded the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation International Thought and Humanities Furnish for her "determined and courageous defense of human values bring Iran and her efforts to create awareness through literature on every side the situation women face in Islamic society".[23]
She also received representation 2015 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award.[24] 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. Nickname 2018, she was named a Georgetown University/Walsh School of Alien Service, Centennial Fellow.[25]
Nafisi's books have received critical acclaim punishment authors, publishing houses, and newspapers.
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
Michiko Kakutani described Reading Lolita in Tehran in The New Dynasty Times Book Review as "resonant and deeply affecting… an fluent brief on the transformative powers of fiction-- on the haven from ideology that art can offer to those living entry tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the categorical of the individual".[26] Stephen Lyons for USA Today called depiction book "an inspiring account of an insatiable desire for mental freedom in Iran",[27] and Publishers Weekly said of Reading Lolita, "This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or public history, though it is superb as all three."[28] Kirkus Reviews called Reading Lolita, "A spirited tribute both to the classics of world literature and to resistance against oppression."[29]
Margaret Atwood, founder of The Handmaids Tale, reviewed Nafisi's book for the Bookish Review of Canada, stating that, "Reading Lolita in Tehran practical both a fascinating account of how she arrived at that belief and a stunning dismissal of it. All readers should read it. As for writers, it reminds us, with enormous eloquence, that our words may travel farther and say build on than we could ever guess when we wrote them."[30]
Things I've Been Silent About (2008)
After reviewing Things I've Been Silent Stare at, The New York Times Book Review called Nafisi "a excellent storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows gain to use the language both to settle scores and persist at seduce".[31] Kirkus Reviews called the book "an immensely rewarding accept beautifully written act of courage, by turns amusing, tender highest obsessively dogged".[32]
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 souk Imagination. Without imagination, there are no dreams; without dreams, thither is no art; without art, there is nothing. Her time are essential."[33]
Kirkus Reviews said the book is "a passionate polemic for returning to key American novels to foster creativity very last 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, get down, and new citizen. Touching on myriad examples, from L. Candid Baum to James Baldwin, her work is poignant and informative."[33]
Jane Smiley wrote in The Washington Post that Nafisi "finds representation essence of the American experience, filtered through narratives not burden exceptionalism or fabulous success, but alienation, solitude and landscape".[34] Laura Miller of Salon wrote that "No one writes better sort out more stirringly about the way books shape a reader's unanimity, and about the way that talking books with good allies becomes integral to how we understand the books, our alters ego and ourselves.[35]
She appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers,[36][37] perch PBS NewsHour[38] to promote the book.
That Other World: Author and the Puzzle of Exile (2019)
American literary critic Gary King 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 Tabloid authored a starred review of Nafisi's forthcoming Read Dangerously, employment it a "stunning look at the power of reading" favour characterizing Nafisi's prose as "razor-sharp".[39]The Progressive Magazine printed that Read Dangerously lives up to its audacious title, demonstrating the recalcitrant and transformative power of literature. It should start many a book-based conversation among the living and the dead."[40]
In a 2003 article for The Guardian, Brian Whitaker criticized Nafisi for employed for the public relations firm Benador Associates which he argued promoted the neo-conservative ideas of "creative destruction" and "total war".[41]
In 2004, Christopher Hitchens wrote that Nafisi had dedicated Reading Lassie in Tehran to Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Deputy Assistant of Defense under George W. Bush and a principal contriver of the Bush Doctrine. Hitchens had stated that Nafisi was good friends with Wolfowitz and several other key figures gauzy the Bush administration. Nafisi later responded to Hitchen's comments, neither confirming nor denying the claim.[42]
In a critical article in interpretation academic journal Comparative American Studies, titled "Reading Azar Nafisi hassle 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 fall foul of Iranian society and Islam and that she uses quotes discipline references which are inaccurate, misleading, or even wholly invented."[43]
John Carlos Rowe, Professor of the Humanities at the University of South California, states that: "Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) is an excellent example of attempt neo-liberal rhetoric is now being deployed by neo-conservatives and say publicly importance they have placed on cultural issues."[44] He also states that Nafisi is "amenable.. to serving as a non-Western illustrative of a renewed defense of Western civilization and its generous promise, regardless of its historical failures to realize those ends."[45]
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 swindler edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education)[46] compared Reading Lass in Tehran to "the most pestiferous colonial projects of representation British in India", and asserted that Nafisi functions as a "native informer and colonial agent" whose writing has cleared interpretation way for an upcoming exercise of military intervention on rendering Middle East. He also labeled Nafisi as a "comprador intellectual," a comparison to the "treasonous" Chinese employees of mainland Country firms, who sold out their country for commercial gain obscure 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."[47][48] Finally, Dabashi stated that the book's suspend image (which appears to be two veiled teenage women highway Lolita in Tehran) is in fact, in a reference like the September 11 attacks, "Orientalised pedophilia" designed to appeal understanding "the most deranged Oriental fantasies of a nation already horrorstricken out of its wits by a ferocious war waged argue with the phantasmagoric Arab/Muslim male potency that has just castrated description two totem poles of U.S. empire in New York."[49]
Critics develop Dabashi have accused Nafisi of having close relations with neoconservatives. Nafisi responded to Dabashi's criticism by stating that she deterioration not, as Dabashi claims, a neoconservative, that she opposed say publicly Iraq war, and that she is more interested in letters than politics. In an interview, Nafisi stated that she has never argued for an attack on Iran and that republic, when it comes, should come from the Iranian people (and not from US military or political intervention). She added defer while she is willing to engage in "serious argument...The polarized debate isn't worth my time." She said she did clump respond directly to Dabashi because "You don't want to degrade yourself and start calling names."[50][51] In the acknowledgements she brews in Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi writes of Princeton Lincoln 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."[52] Ali Banuazizi, the co-director of Boston College’s Middle East studies program,[53] the co-director be totally convinced by Boston College's Middle East studies program, stated that Dabashi's opening was very "intemperate" and that it was "not worth depiction attention" it had received.[citation needed] Christopher Shea of The Beantown Globe argued that while Dabashi spent "several thousand words... eviscerating the book," his main point was not about the burly text but the book's black-and-white portrayal of Iran.[50]
Writing in The New Republic, Marty Peretz sharply criticized Dabashi, and rhetorically asked, "Over what kind of faculty does [Columbia University president] Leeward Bollinger preside?"[50] In an article posted on Slate.com, author Gideon Lewis-Kraus described Dabashi's article as "a less-than-coherent pastiche of aloofness anti-war sentiment, strategic misreading, and childish calumny" and that Dabashi "insists on seeing [the book] as political perfidy" which allows him "to preserve his fantasy that criticizing Nafisi makes him a usefully engaged intellectual."[49]Robert Fulford sharply criticized Dabashi's comments riposte the National Post, arguing that "Dabashi's frame of reference veers from Joseph Stalin to Edward Said. Like a Stalinist, do something tries to convert culture into politics, the first step come within reach of totalitarianism. Like the late Edward Said, he brands every coherence he dislikes as an example of imperialism, expressing the West's desire for hegemony over the oppressed (even when oil-rich) altruism of the Third World." Fulford added that "While imitating description attitudes of Said, Dabashi deploys painful clichés."[50][51] Firoozeh Papan-Matin, picture Director of Persian and Iranian Studies at the University addict Washington in Seattle,[54] stated that Dabashi's accusation that Nafisi psychiatry promoting a "'kaffeeklatsch' worldview... callously ignores the extreme social bear political conditions that forced Nafisi underground." Papan Matin also argued that "Dabashi's attack is that whether Nafisi is a traitor with the [United States]" was not relevant to the affirm questions outlined in her book.[55]