Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; some had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they removed their veils and began to speak more freely–their stories intertwining with the novels they were reading by Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, as fundamentalists seized hold of the universities and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the women in Nafisi’s living room spoke not only of the books they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments.

Azar Nafisi’s luminous masterwork gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny, and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

阿扎尔•纳菲西（Azar Nafisi）

伊朗裔美国女作家、学者、评论家。

1955年生于伊朗，13岁赴海外留学，26岁时获得美国俄克拉荷马州立大学文学博士学位。后归国任教于德黑兰大学等三所高校，但因在女性的穿着与行为等问题上与校方产生严重分歧而被辞退。1997年纳菲西返回美国，以访问学者的身份就职于约翰•霍普金斯大学。

除此书以外，纳菲西还在《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》、《华尔街日报》等主流媒体上发表文化批评专栏，如今已成为美国炙手可热的评论家。