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.

阿紮爾•納菲西（Azar Nafisi）

伊朗裔美國女作傢、學者、評論傢。

1955年生於伊朗，13歲赴海外留學，26歲時獲得美國俄剋拉荷馬州立大學文學博士學位。後歸國任教於德黑蘭大學等三所高校，但因在女性的穿著與行為等問題上與校方産生嚴重分歧而被辭退。1997年納菲西返迴美國，以訪問學者的身份就職於約翰•霍普金斯大學。

除此書以外，納菲西還在《紐約時報》、《華盛頓郵報》、《華爾街日報》等主流媒體上發錶文化批評專欄，如今已成為美國炙手可熱的評論傢。