Iran in retrospect

Things I've Been Silent About By Azar Nafisi. Photo / Supplied

Azar Nafisi, author of high-rotate book-club smash Reading Lolita in Tehran, turns her attention inwards.

Instead of writing about the liberating potential of literature (Reading Lolita covered a subversive reading-circle in Iran), Azar now chronicles her fascinating life lived in revolutionary times that shaped a bookish girl into the exiled and uncompromising academic she is today.

As with almost all autobiographies, mother looms large. In this case mother, Nezhat - who was one of Iran's first female members of parliament - is remembered by her daughter as a brooding and dominating fantasist who lives in the shadows cast by her dead first husband. Nezhat is ruthlessly caught out in multiple lies by Nafisi about shifting political positions, idealised memories of childhood and even her own age. This criticism, of her own mother, almost rivals Nafisi's unwavering and continuing scorn for Iran's present Islamic rulers.

Parts of this book are uncommonly well-researched for a piece of introspection. In addition to her own notes and previous works, Nafisi had access to her father's diaries which began when she was 4 and continued unabated through a four-year stretch in prison and beyond.

Other parts, such as a foggy recollection of why Nafisi married her first husband, feel varnished. Nafisi's recollection of life under the Shah suffers from perhaps the same failings as her mother. The author grew up as the privileged daughter of the Mayor of Tehran. She studied abroad in England and the United States and took vacations at family holiday homes on the Caspian coast.

While conditions under the ayatollahs were, and still are, undoubtedly trying (Nafisi lost her job at the University of Tehran for refusing to wear a veil), the prior, autocratic government was hardly the relatively trouble-free and budding democracy that Nafisi seems to recall.

Despite these lapses, Things I've Been Silent About is a literate and engaging read that blends mostly sober recounting with moments of revelation. She discusses novels (Austen, Tolstoy, Nabokov and many others get name-checked, deconstructed and blended into Iranian life), the harsh realities of revolution (one of Nafisi's male friends joined a communist group and liberated a prison during the 1979 uprising, only to later see his wife imprisoned and executed at the same jail) and proverbs.

The origins of "the walls have ears" turns out to be Persian - or at least a version. Nezhat urges her friends to be cautious about revealing too much in front of her daughter by saying: "Let us not forget that walls have mice and little mice have ears."

And a 12th century joke about a brave lion-rider who reverts to a meek and henpecked husband when he returns home has a punch-line that seems apt, considering how staunch Nafisi has subsequently become: "If it weren't for what happens at home, I could never ride a lion."

Things I'Ve Been Silent About
By Azar Nafisi (Random House $38)

* Matt Nippert is an Auckland reviewer.