Things I've Been Silent About

Zusatztext "Absorbing . . . a testament to the ways in which narrative truth-telling—from the greatest works of literature to the most intimate family stories—sustains and strengthens us.” — O: The Oprah Magazine    “Deeply felt . . . an affecting account of a family’s struggle.” — New York Times    “A gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature! Nafisi knows how to use language both to settle scores and to seduce.” — New York Times Book Review    “An immensely rewarding and beautifully written act of courage! by turns amusing! tender and obsessively dogged.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   “A lyrical! often wrenching memoir.” — People Informationen zum Autor Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal , and The New Republic and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children. Klappentext "Absorbing . . . a testament to the ways in which narrative truth-telling-from the greatest works of literature to the most intimate family stories-sustains and strengthens us."-O: The Oprah Magazine In this stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, Azar Nafisi shares her memories of living in thrall to a powerful and complex mother against the backdrop of a country's political revolution. A girl's pain over family secrets, a young woman's discovery of the power of sensuality in literature, the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by upheaval-these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir as a gifted storyteller once again transforms the way we see the world and "reminds us of why we read in the first place" (Newsday). Praise for Things I've Been Silent About "Deeply felt . . . an affecting account of a family's struggle."-New York Times "A gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows how to use language both to settle scores and to seduce."-New York Times Book Review "An immensely rewarding and beautifully written act of courage, by turns amusing, tender and obsessively dogged."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A lyrical, often wrenching memoir."-People Chapter 1 Saifi I have often asked myself how much of my mother’s account of her meeting with her first husband was a figment of her imagination. If not for the photographs, I would have doubted that he had ever existed. A friend once talked of my mother’s “admirable resistance to the unwanted,” and since, for her, so much in life was unwanted, she invented stories about herself that she came to believe with such conviction that we started doubting our own certainties. In her mind their courtship began with a dance. It seemed more likely to me that his parents would have asked her father for her hand, a marriage of convenience between two prominent families, as had been the convention in Tehran in the 1940s. But over the years she never changed this story, the way she did so many of her other accounts. She had met him at her uncle’s wedding. She was careful to mention that in the morning she wore a flowery crêpe-de-chine dress and in the evening one made of duchess satin, and they danced all evening (“After my father had left,” she would say, and then immediately add, “because no one dared dance with me in my father’s...

Product details

• Authors: Azar Nafisi
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 02.03.2010
• EAN: 9780812973907
• ISBN: 978-0-8129-7390-7
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; Iran : Berichte, Erinnerungen