Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran

AbstractOver the past few years, partially as a result of the success of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, a cluster of memoirs have been written by members of the Iranian diaspora. Almost all of them become deeply enmeshed in the politics of rendering Iran from a transnational perspective. Hence, in these memoirs, representation is regularly interwoven with other aims and projections, which militate against accuracy. In this article, an attempt will be made to show that Reading Lolita in Tehran is a work of one who has 'Westernized' her outlook; Nafisi constantly confirms what orientalist representations have regularly claimed: the backwardness and inferiority of Muslims and Islam. This article will attempt to show that Nafisi has produced gross misrepresentations of Iranian society and Islam and that she uses quotes and references which are inaccurate, misleading, or even wholly invented.