Azar Nafisi on Iran’s Static Sense of History

By Bill Marx

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In a recent World Books podcast I talk to Azar Nafisi, the author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran.

In her new memoir, “Things I’ve Been Silent About,” Nafisi chronicles the trials and tribulations of about growing up in Iran, focusing on her volatile relationship with her difficult mother and charismatic father, who at one point was the mayor of Tehran. Nafisi also writes about her marriages as well as her shifting personal and political responses to the Islamic Revolution in Iran during the late 1970s. In my conversation with Nafisi she takes the opportunity to answer critics who see her as primarily a political spokesperson rather than a writer.

Azar Nafisi’s memoir is entitled Things I’ve Been Silent About and is published by Random House. To learn more about her and her writing, go here.

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