What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 1-3 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

In the opening three chapters, Nafisi sets the scene for the rest of her book. She discusses how, in 1995, after finally resigning from her post as a literature professor at the University of Allameh Tabatabai, she starts a literary discussion group in her Tehran apartment with a hand-picked group of seven of her best and most dedicated female students. She describes her apartment, the young women, and the views from her windows. She also explains that, in the repressive, reactionary, and fundamentalist world of Iran, she and her young adult students need a space of freedom. Nafisi's apartment becomes a place of "transgression" where they can freely discuss Western texts that the regime considers both decadent and subversive: books like The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, and, of course, Lolita. Nafisi notes that

The theme of the class was the relation between fiction and reality.

Nafisi tries to describe for a Western audience what it was like to live in a totalitarian regime, where even the tiniest gesture asserting individualism, such as letting a stray hair fall out from the required veil, became an act of rebellion. In this world, reading novels, a freedom we take for granted, became an extraordinary gift, a way for the women to understand themselves and the world and to build relationships with each other. As Nafisi puts it:

We were, to borrow from Nabokov, to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction.

What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 4-7 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

Nafisi’s students begin to arrive. She has been unsure if they would come and was worried for their safety. The girls arrange themselves according to their own relationships and their sense of emotional boundaries.

The class begins with Nafisi explaining that the purpose of the class is to read, discuss, and respond to works of fiction. Each student will keep a private diary to record responses to the novels read.

Nafisi relates the world of Iran in the 1900s to the world in Nabokov’s "Invitation to a Beheading." Nafisi likens this world to her own world of the Islamic Republic. Nafisi relates how the blind censor of Iran was a metaphor for their colorless reality, requiring those who desired freedom to invent themselves in contrast to that which was created for them by someone else’s imagination. They fight against the political ramifications of every book, every scene, every act. The fear of being considered "Western", and therefore "decadent", permeated their daily existence.

It was in this group that they could escape the "blind censor" of the Iranian government. They could create their own freedoms in their own reality. In the meantime, they displayed little acts of rebellion, in how the dressed, how they thought, and how they responded to their world. Through these acts of rebellion, they managed to articulate their own identity and their own vision of what their lives should be.

What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 8-10 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

Nafisi imagines the world of one of her students, Sanaz, as she leaves the class to return home. The primary concern is to be invisible, both in dress (hence wearing the veil and robe) and in action (looking down, never talking to someone of the opposite sex, not letting any makeup show). As Nafisi ponders on whether she chose her students or rather that her students chose her, she is reminded of the circumstances involved in asking the youngest, Yassi, to be part of her class.

Nafisi explains the connection between Nabokov’s novel, "Lolita," to their situation in Iran. She does not confuse the novel as being a parody of their lives, but as a critique of all totalitarian regimes. Nafisi points out that Lolita is revealed to the reader only through what Humbert tells. He has separated her from her own history (her dead father and brother, and now her dead mother), and replaced it with one of his own creation. As a butterfly is pinned to the wall of the camp office, so the lives of the women in Nafisi’s group are pinned against the backdrop of the world the Islamic Republic has created for them. In that butterfly, Nafisi sees the symbolism of Lolita’s shared experience with her students of the "perverse intimacy" forced between victim and jailer, as such is the role of women in the oppressive Iranian regime.

What is the summary for Part 1, Chapters 11-13 of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

At the beginning of their time together, Nafisi had asked them questions about themselves, such as, "What do you think of your mother?" Acquiring these questions from a friend, she eventually realizes that they are dull questions, which elicit equally dull answers.

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What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 14-16 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

Nafisi relates how she has been rebellious and insubordinate since the arrest of her father. The students share dreams they have had about not wearing their veils. In a totalitarian world (as Nafisi refers to Nabokov’s "Invitation to a Beheading"), even dreams can be suspect and "illegal."

Nafisi repeats Nabokov’s assertion that every great novel is a fairy tale. The author re-creates a reality, with horrors and terrors, as well as its goodness. Good is defined as not giving in to limitations and restrictions imposed by evil in this reality. Nafisi says that every great work of art "is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors, and infidelities of life."

The group takes up the concept of the villain in Nabokov’s "Lolita." Nafisi states that Humbert is a villain because he has his own vision of life, his own and the lives of others. She parallels this point of view to that of dictators, who are interested only in their own vision of other people.

A conflict between Azin and Mahshid arises. Mahshid feels that Azin looks down on her because of her inexperience. Nafisi states that, despite her best efforts, the two girls continued to be at odds.

The girls list the "debts" they owe to the regime’s regulations of the conduct of women: "parties, eating ice cream in public, falling in love, holding hands, wearing lipstick in public and reading ‘Lolita’ in Tehran."

What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 17-19 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

A reference to Nabokov’s stories describing the characters’ search for a link to another world leads to a discussion of the similarity to their lives. Nafisi states that their discussions of books are links from their troubled reality to their own personal world.

Yet Nafisi takes pride in the "aura of magical affinity" of her home, that makes peace possible, even between the conflicting personalities of some of the girls. It is a type of revenge against those who regulated their lives, both government and family.

Nafisi’s mother regularly made Turkish coffee, for Nafisi’s students as well as for a wide variety of people in the community. As Yassi and Nafisi were waiting for their coffee, men from the Revolutionary Committee come to the door, trying to arrest Nafisi’s neighbor. They are unable to enter his apartment, so they want to go through Nafisi’s yard to get into the neighbor’s house. Nafisi politely refused, but the men returned later, stating that the criminal was now in their back yard. The men enter the house and begin a shootout with the criminal. He is finally captured, yet is soon released.

What is the summary of Part 1, Chapters 20-22 in Reading Lolita in Tehran?

Nafisi describes the one male member of the class, Nima, who is married to another member, Manna. Though Manna and Nima are part of Nafisi’s class, they were not actual students of hers at the university. Their experiences with one Professor X at the University of Tehran (whom Nafisi knows) represent the difficulties of women in university classes.

The group is worried about Sanaz, who is not present and also missed the week before.

Sanaz finally arrives and explains her absence. She had been imprisoned for several days, along with her friends, for meeting together in mixed company. After a humiliating experience (including several virginity tests), she is released after she signs a confession for crimes she never committed. The memory plagues Nafisi, even though it is not her memory. Even those things that happened to her, she tries to distance herself from, as though they belonged to someone else.

Nafisi once again asked the girls to describe their images of themselves. Though they were reluctant at the beginning of their class, now they make an effort. Each shows or describes herself as in some way separated into two realities. One is her true image, the other is the image imposed on her by others.

Nafisi realizes that her generation of Iranians mourns a life that was lost, opportunities that they were deprived of. Her girls, however, mourn that which they have never had and despair of ever having. Nafisi describes them as a "generation with no past."

What is the summary of Part 2, Chapters 1-3 in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?

Nafisi describes the Tehran airport and its effect on her. As a child, she and her brother had always considered the airport in Tehran hospitable and magical. Yet now she is home, but the airport is not welcoming. It is a place of anxiety.

She is searched a second time. The security officer looks through her luggage, especially at her books, which include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Though they look at it smugly, they do not confiscate it. That, Nafisi says, will come later.

After attending school in England and Switzerland, Nafisi returns home and gets married, but as soon as she accepts his proposal that she will divorce him. She must wait until her father is released from prison, which doesn’t happen for three years. She also must agree to give up alimony.

In 1977 she marries Bijan Naderi, her current husband. They had met two years before at Berkeley. She loved him for his loyalty to what he felt was most important, yet did not support the more radical elements of the revolution when it came.

On her return to Iran, Nafisi applies for a teaching position with the English Department of the University of Iran. During the interview, Dr. A asks Nafisi why she changed her dissertation. She explains her growing fascination with the writings of Mike Gold, an editor for a radical literary journal in the 1930s. Eventually accepting the position, she is overwhelmingly excited over her new post.