Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0007841, Mon, 5 May 2003 09:43:18 -0700

Subject
Fw: in most of Nabokovs novels there was always the shadow of
another world
Date
Body
EDNOTE. Those wishing the full text may find it at the URL below.
----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy P. Klein
. ----------------- Message requiring your approval (64 lines) ------------------



Sunday, May 04, 2003
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=23191
The Word



Books Are Us

An Iranian memoir about reading fiction in a censored society is chilling, says Mini Kapoor



Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
By Azar Nafisi
Random House
Price: $19


In the fall of 1995, eight women congregated in the living room of Azar Nafisi▓s second-floor Tehran apartment ≈ with its mismatched furniture testifying to her peripatetic past, the upper branches of a sprawling tree casting a green curtain on the bustle in the street below but retaining a vistaed view of the Elburz Mountains. For two years they would continue to honour this Thursday morning rendezvous.


As the eight readers progressed from A Thousand and One Nights to Lolita, they found alleys out of their claustrophobia. Nafisi immediately clarifies that their personal narratives bore no resemblance to the novel, it was instead the theme that illuminated their predicament: the confiscation of one individual▓s life by another. In surreal times when men worried about dreaming ⌠illegal dreams■, they found that ⌠in most of Nabokov▓s novels there was always the shadow of another world, one that was only attainable through fiction. It is this world that prevents his heroes and heroines from utter despair, that becomes their refuge in a life that is consistently brutal.■ Their task was akin to many of Nabokov▓s protagonists: to locate ⌠a rent in (their)world leading to another world of tenderness and beauty■.

■.



.



URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=23191

Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay)






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
Attachment