Upon opening Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran", the reader has to be ready for a journey that will take him through
the works of some of the greatest classical writers as well as through life in the Islamic Republic during Ayatollah Khomeiny's rise and reign.The author, a teacher of English
Literature at Tehran's University, formed a secret literary club with some of her best
students to freely study the writings of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Jane Austen without having to put up with the censorship imposed on her by the government. She draws parallels between what were, in their times, controversial characters from a moralistic point of view, such as Lolita and Humbert, Gatsby, and Daisy Miller, and her own life and the one of her students in a country where, for a woman, the mere fact showing a strand of hair is deemed as a symbol of utmost immorality.This is an extremely well written book, in which the author shows her wide knowledge of literature, but she speaks about it in a deeply humanistic tone, far from the stiff language sometimes used by scholars. She shares with her readers her doubts and inner struggles regarding whether she should stay in Iran or leave, her love for her country in spite of the lack of freedom, and her attachment to her students whom she doesn't want to abandon. She also gives a moving account of her students' life, young women torn between traditions that have been hammered into them and their desire for freedom and a chance to realise their dreams.Towards the end of the book, we are left wondering what happened to every one of her club's members, did they find happiness and fulfilment or did they end up stuck in a suffocating life? What impact did the study of great authors have on them, and did it last? Every literature lover should read this book, it is deeply touching and brilliantly written.