Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international bestseller
Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning
personal story of growing up in a family in Iran, moving
memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and
difficult mother, against the background of Iran during a
time of revolution and change. A young girl’s pain over
family secrets and a mother’s lost life, a young woman’s
discovery of the power of sensuality in literature, the
price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by
political upheaval–these and other threads are woven
together in this beautiful memoir, as a gifted storyteller
once again uses her own life to transform the way we see the
world and “reminds us of why we read in the first place”
(Newsday).
Azar Nafisi’s intelligent and
complex mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an
important and romantic life, created mesmerizing fictions
about herself, the past, her rich first husband who died at
a young age, and her own family. As she talked to her
children, she would disappear into these family stories,
narratives of triumph that hid as much as they revealed.
Nafisi’s father escaped into narratives of another kind–into
the classic talks of Persian literature–telling his beloved
daughter of the great heroes and heroines in
Shahnamah, the Persian Book of Kings, and in other
Persian classics. As her father began a series of love
affairs, his daughter began to lie to her mother about her
father’s infidelities, and about other events women were
supposed to be silent about. Nafisi’s complicity in these
childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining
silent about political, cultural, social, and personal
injustices. Part detective story and part portrait of an
exceptional woman, marriage, and mother-father-daughter
struggle, Things I’ve Been Silent About is also a
deeply personal reflection on women’s choices, and on how
Azar Nafisi found inspiration for a different kind of
woman’s life, first in stories by Persian writers and then
in stories by Western writers, such as Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice.
Reaching back in time to reflect on
other generations in the Nafisi family, Things I’ve Been
Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a
family’s life that spans the twentieth century in Iran,
during many periods of change leading up to the Islamic
Revolution of 1978-1979, which turned Azar Nafisi’s beloved
Iran into a religious dictatorship. Writing of the strength
and intelligence that allowed her mother to serve in
Parliament, even while her father, once mayor of Tehran, was
in jail, Nafisi also explores the coffee hours her mother
held all her life, where at first women came together to
gossip, to tell fortunes, and to give silent acknowledgment
of things never spoken about, and then evolved to where men
and women would meet to openly discuss the unfolding
revolution.
This unforgettable portrait of a woman,
a family, and of a troubled beloved homeland is a stunning
book that millions of readers will embrace, a new triumph
from an author who is a modern master of the memoir.
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