Reading Lolita in Tehran

Ms. Nafisi talked about her book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, published by Random House. Professor Nafisi resigned from her job as a professor of English literature at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies in 1995. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Ms. Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students from diverse backgrounds whom she had taught at the university. They learned to use this forum to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. Professor Nafiasi talked about the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid protests and demonstrations. Then women were forced to wear the veil at university and eventually separated in class from men as bombs fell outside. In her b close