Reading Lolita in Tehran. A memoir in books

In Iran in the late 90s, Azar Nafisi and seven young women - her former students - gathered at her house every Thursday to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. Shy and uncomfortable at first, they soon began to open up, not only about the novels they were reading but also about their own dreams and disappointments. Their personal stories intertwine with those they are reading - Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita - their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Azar Nafisi also tells her own story, back to the early days of the revolution when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran, amid a swirl of protests and demonstrations. Azar Nafisi's luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women's lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.