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 girlβs pain over family secrets and a motherβs lost life, a young womanβs discovery of the power of sensuality in literature, the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheavalβthese 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 βreminds us of why we read in the first placeβ (Newsday).
Azar Nafisiβs 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. Nafisiβs father escaped into narratives of another kindβinto the classic talks of Persian literatureβtelling 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 fatherβs infidelities, and about other events women were supposed to be silent about. Nafisiβs 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 Iβve Been Silent About is also a deeply personal reflection on womenβs choices, and on how Azar Nafisi found inspiration for a different kind of womanβs life, first in stories by Persian writers and then in stories by Western writers, such as Charlotte BrontΓ«βs Jane Eyre and Jane Austenβs Pride and Prejudice.
Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things Iβve Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a familyβs 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 Nafisiβs 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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