The author of the controversial Reading Lolita in Tehran tells us about the books she read when she was growing up in Iran that taught her important lessons about defending human rights

Throughout my childhood and teen years, even much later when I had children of my own, my mother worried that I had my head in the clouds, reading too many stories, neglecting real life and its problems. My take on having one’s “head in the clouds” was different from my mother’s, for me it meant having a place of one’s own, somewhere like Alice’s Wonderland, or what I later named The Republic of Imagination. A place on earth, in our own backyard that might help us get to the clouds and all sorts of other wonderlands, existing all around us and yet invisible to the naked eye. I wanted to go there in order to return to my own home refreshed, armed with a new perspective, prepared to confront “life and its problems.” For what is a wonderland but a new and magical version of our everyday reality, rescuing that reality from the dust of habit and complacency, what is the Republic of Imagination except the version of reality as it should or could have been?



Facebook Twitter Pinterest When Azar was growing up in Iran she always had her head in the clouds, a little bit like Alice’s Wonderland, seen here from the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written by Lewis Carroll in 1865 (and illustrated here by John Tenniel. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty Images

This is the magic of books which are read first and foremost for the pure and sensual joy of reading, of discovering, of unexpected adventures in unknown places, satisfying our curiosity and giving us the gift of true empathy. Reading offers us a unique kind of joy, that of being simultaneously private while sharing a communal experience. You can, without leaving that small space in a corner of your room, travel to numerous places, move back and forth in time, meet many different people, and connect to millions of other readers whom you have never met and might never meet in person.

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As is the case with real life friends, good friends, my favorite fictional characters remain with me throughout my life, I never grow tired of their company. With them I travel to unknown places, creating our own secrets and secret spaces, and with each new reading at different times of my life I discover new unknown corners in my favorite books and characters. And as with true friends, I learnt to live better and be more independent.

As a child my father told me tales from the great epic Iranian poet Ferdowsi. One favorite character was Princess Rudabeh, who fell in love with Zal, a great and handsome hero, with one peculiarity in that his hair since his birth was all white. The great obstacle to their love was that their very powerful families were also mortal enemies. I followed with anticipation and trepidation how the two young lovers met and made love in secret, and stood up to their families until they were united. Rudabeh was no feminist, but a thousand years ago she existed in a poet’s imagination, an independent woman, knowing the risks she had to go through for love, but also knowing what she wanted, and how to get it.

When I went to England at the age of 13, I took Rudabeh’s and many other stories from Iran’s rich literary landscape with me, and in England I discovered Rudabeh’s younger English cousins, women like Jane Austen, who in 18th and 19th century England said no to the dictates of their parents and mores of their time, embracing a life of poverty but making their own free choices, marrying only the man they loved.

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From her I also learnt that you need to be deserving of true love, ready to see through the eyes of your beloved not just your strength but your flaws, love opened Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s eyes to their own prejudice and pride. Their story also proves the truth of the poet Ezra Pound’s claim that, “Literature is news that remains news.”

Two centuries later, spin-off novels, films and television series of Pride and Prejudice speak to us, bring us joy and touch our hearts. Yet none reach the depth and beauty of the original, not even in terms of sensuality. No scene in Joe Wright’s recent film adaptation, can produce the sexual and emotional tension that we encounter time and again between Elizabeth and Darcy, especially in the part where they try to communicate in a public drawing room, suppressing their burning passion, their desire to speak freely, while she is pouring tea for others who, unaware of their feelings come and go, interrupting them at every attempt to communicate.

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Then there is Elizabeth’s young American Cousin, Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Over a century later living in a racist southern city, we follow her growing up mainly during her father’s defense of an innocent African American man, and learn that independence and courage mean doing the right thing even if you lose, even if you know you will fail. From her we learn the connection between fiction and empathy, the importance to defend other people’s human rights as you would defend your own, the fact that other’s rights and freedoms guarantee yours.

Perhaps the best defense of why we need to save books, to cherish them and to read them comes from the fictional characters themselves, best expressed by the first of these quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird:

“Until I feared I would lose it I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

When I think about why books are so important to our society, I am always drawn to the following three quotes:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. (To Kill A Mockingbird)

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. (Pride and Prejudice)

I’ve reached the end of this great history And all the land will fill with talk of me: I shall not die, these seeds I’ve sown will save My name and reputation from the grave, And men of sense and wisdom will proclaim, When I have gone, my praises and my fame. (The Persian Book of Kings)

Join Azar’s #BooksSave campaign

Do you have a line (or many) from your favourite books which has inspired you, fired you up or moved you to change – we want to know! Simply write out your quote, or take a photo of it and share it with @GdnChildrensBks @WindmillBooks with the hashtag #BooksSave.