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 girlโs pain over family secrets and a motherโs lost life, a young womanโs discovery of the power of sensuality in literature, the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheavalโthese 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 โreminds us of why we read in the first placeโ (Newsday).
Azar Nafisiโs 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. Nafisiโs father escaped into narratives of another kindโinto the classic talks of Persian literatureโtelling 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 fatherโs infidelities, and about other events women were supposed to be silent about. Nafisiโs 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 Iโve Been Silent About is also a deeply personal reflection on womenโs choices, and on how Azar Nafisi found inspiration for a different kind of womanโs life, first in stories by Persian writers and then in stories by Western writers, such as Charlotte Brontรซโs Jane Eyre and Jane Austenโs Pride and Prejudice.
Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things Iโve Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a familyโs 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 Nafisiโs 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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