Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a memoir by Iranian American author Azar Nafisi, first released to widespread critical and popular acclaim in 2003. The memoir recalls Nafisi’s experiences living and teaching in Iran after the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran, until her eventual exile in the United States in 1997.

At the center of the memoir is Nafisi’s account of a secret book club she hosted during her last two years in Iran. During the weekly sessions with a handpicked group of female former students, Nafisi and her “girls” read and discuss classic works of English literature, with particular importance placed on the works of Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov, American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, American British author Henry James, and English author Jane Austen. Throughout the memoir, Nafisi uses literature as a lens through which she interprets and analyzes the political, cultural, and social issues that dominated life in the Islamic Republic during the 1980s and 1990s.

This guide uses the paperback Penguin Modern Classics edition of Reading Lolita in Tehran, published in 2015.

Content Warning: The source text contains allusions and/or depictions of political and domestic violence, including allusions to child sexual abuse, and death by suicide.