Reading Lolita in Tehran (Paperback)

“Moving, a rich display of the transformative power of fiction.” The New York Times “Far more than memoir, literary criticism, or social history, though she is superb in all three, Nafisi has produced an original work on the relationship between life and literature.” Publishers Weekly Iranian author Azar Nafisi takes us into the intimate lives of eight women who must meet secretly to explore Western literature banned in their country. For two years, before leaving Iran in 1997, Nafisi and seven other young women read Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, Lolita, and other classic works under literary censorship. Nafisi's narrative dates back to the early days of the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini (1979), when she began teaching at the University of Tehran amid a whirlwind of protests and demonstrations. A work of great passion and poetic beauty that helps us understand Iran's bloody conflicts with neighboring Iraq and the tyranny of the Islamic regime.