Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Content Warning: This section depicts abuse of women.



Reading Lolita in Tehran opens with Azar Nafisi, a professor of English literature, introducing the secret book club she founded in Tehran in 1995 with a handful of female former students from her university teaching days. The girls come from different backgrounds and ideological persuasions, yet Nafisi brings them together for two years to read and discuss works of literature, with a special focus on English literature.

Nafisi compares two photographs that were taken in 1997 of her standing with her book club participants, just before she immigrated to the United States. In the first photo, the women are all wearing “black robes and head scarves” in accordance with the Islamic regime’s edicts (4). In the second photo, they have removed their robes and reveal their own individual style in clothing and hairstyles.

Nafisi says that the purpose of her memoir is “to celebrate our reading of Nabokov in Tehran, against all odds” (6). She describes their weekly morning meetings in her home, providing some insights into the personalities and individual circumstances of her book club participants, whom she often refers to as her “girls.