Title
The title refers to Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita, a story about a middle aged man who has a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old pubescent girl. The book 'Lolita' is used by the author as a metaphor for life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although the book states that the metaphor is not allegorical (p. 35) Nafisi does want to draw parallels between "victim and jailer" (p. 37). The author implies that, like the principal character in 'Lolita', the regime in Iran imposes their "dream upon our reality, turning us into his figments of imagination." In both cases, the protagonist commits the "crime of solipsizing another person's life."
Read more about this topic: Reading Lolita In Tehran
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“Men don’t and can’t live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don’t live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of Labourers’ Unions.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)