An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to its repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels.

For two years they met to talk, share and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color". Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity", she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom." In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Communicates brilliantly the terrifying moral absolutism of a state which believes that to write of adultery is to condone it.'

'The use of Lolita, Gatsby etc. as metaphor is exquisite.'

A remarkably original account of one woman's experience of the Iranian revolution, generously interspersed with erudite passages of literary criticism. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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。