Reading Lolita In Tehran

Reading Lolita In Tehran is a towering achievement. There is absolutely no doubt about that, nor about the brilliance of the amazingly gifted woman who wrote it. It tells the story of Dr. Nafisi -- an educator in Iran -- who has an unmatched passion for literature and reading and who chooses to teach a select group of her female students a sampling of world's greatest literature;ones that are currently banned in Iran (like works of Nabokov, James, Austen, etc.) If you read the books discussed, you are sure to appreciate the discussions and analyses that much more. But even if you haven't, it will make you want to.

… my readings, I continued to attend movies. And the movies -- write in the heart of the year end awards and the Oscar season -- continue to thrill. Memoirs of a Geisha is probably one of the prettiest movies you will ever see. It is based on the blockbuster book, and is getting, if not ringing endorsements, but good reviews. A criticism has been levied against it by some folks -- not necessarily the critics -- that the lead actresses should have been Japanese and not the Chinese/Hongkong superstars. But my problem with that criticism is an obvious one. Why don't the same folks complain that the book was written by an American and not by a Japanese?!! The movie tells the story of how a very young girl is sold to a geisha house for a better life. As she becomes an adult, she herself becomes a geisha and experiences life among the priviledged -- a far cry from her poor beginnings in a fishing village. Then World War 2 changes everything for Japan and the Geisha World.

Ancient Peruvians cultivated crops 10,000 years ago

...{Science} last June, anthropological archaeologist Tom Dillehay from the Vanderbilt University revealed that the squash seeds he found in the remnants of what may have been ancient storage bins on the lower western slopes of the Andes in northern Peru are almost 10,000 years old. «I don’t want to play the early button game, but the temporal gap between the Old and New World, in terms of a first pulse toward civilization, is beginning to close», {Discover} magazine quoted him, as saying.

1: Neither West Nor East-564
2: A Compendious Arabic-Persian Dictionary-566
3: Kant and Zarathushtra-570
4: The Indians in Susa-567
5: Staging Nezami’s Seven Beauties-568
6: Landlord and Peasant in Persia-569
7: The TATA Group-571
8: سفر ماه گل-572
9: Ayatollahs’ Iran: a Nationalistic Theocracy as Freemasonic Machination-573
10: Jahrom: Down History Lane-574
11: Iranian elements in the ancient culture of the Eastern Slavs-575
12: Webmaster-577
13: نامۀ دانشگاه شیراز به امیر مهدی بدیع - شمارۀ ۱۴۳۸۹ مورخ ۲۸/۱۱/۱۳۴۷-578
14: Les tétradrachmes d'Orodès II et de Phraate IV-579
15: خاطرات اردشیر خاضع-580
16: Islam and Mazdaeism-581
17: The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran-582
18: My Bombay Kitchen-583
19: من دختر هراتم-584
20: Habib Qaderi-585
21: The two eyes of the Earth-586
22: Hegel et les origines de la pensée contemporaine-588
23: Iranica Antiqua-589
24: Luristan Excavation Documents (VOL. III) -590
25: The Martin Luther King of Zoroastrianism-591
26: L’encerclement de l’Iran à la lumière de l’histoire du “Grand Moyen-Orient”-592
27: فرنگ و فرنگی‌مآبی-593
28: 1967 secret Senate hearings on CIA made public -594
29: چاپ دو کتاب فارسی در اسرائیل-595
30: Rostam and Sohrab by Hyperwerks-596
31: تولد و استقلال دانشگاه تهران فرخنده باد-597
32: Ces Barbares calomniés-599