Reading Lolita in Tehran

This landmark book by the Iranian-American writer Azar Afisi is an account of the oppression of the Islamic Revolution in her native Iran and an ode to the liberating power of literature and truth.

In her book, Nafisi recounts the experiences of a group of students she worked with as a professor of English at the University of Tehran. She was dismissed from that professorship in 1981 for refusing to cover her hair and 16 years later, emigrated to America, where she teaches, writes, and is an internationally respected voice for press and personal freedoms.

This memoir by an Iranian-American professor describes teaching for decades in Iran: first, as instructor at the University of Tehran; later, as facilitator for an all-female book group.

At the university, she advocates for meaningful acts of civil disobedience. Through the book group, she introduces a small group of women, shut out of the country’s educational system, to Western literature. In both, we see her turn an oppressive environment into a space where her students become human, sentient, and creative.

The tenderness with which she treats both her students and the novels that they’re reading makes this memoir a lovely… show more.

If you want to read a book about life in Iran post-revolution, look no further than Nafisi’s poignant memoir about her years as a professor who gathered a group of young female students at her home to secretly read banned books of western literature. I wonder about Nafisi’s former students and where they are right now as protests continue to rage in the country.

This memoir is so important to me that I included a scene of me reading it in my own memoir! To this day, when I find myself doubting the power of writing and literature, I return to this book; reading it is akin to sitting in the world’s most interesting and urgent literature class. Set in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution, this memoir is organized by the banned works of classic Western Literature Professor Nafisi discusses with a clandestine, all-women’s book group. The women in the group come from drastically different religious and socio-economic backgrounds, but through the reading and… show more.