Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Azar Nafisi was born in Tehran, the capital of Iran, in 1948. She describes her family as an old and distinguished one: “[A]s far back as eight hundred years ago […] the Nafisis were known for their contributions to literature and science” (84). Both her mother and father were educated and politically active individuals under the reign of the Shah, with her father serving as mayor of Tehran and her mother acting as a member of the National Consultative Assembly in the 1960s.

Nafisi depicts her upbringing as both cultured and highly privileged. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, she recalls her father reading classic Iranian poetry to her at bedtime, thereby providing an early introduction to literary culture. She spent her childhood being educated abroad in private boarding schools in England and Switzerland. She studied in the United States as a university student, eventually returning to Iran as a professor of English literature.

Nafisi’s experiences teaching at both the University of Tehran and the University of Allameh Tabatabei throughout the 1980s and ’90s are key in Reading Lolita in Tehran. She describes how she tried (and failed) to resist the imposition of the head scarf upon female teachers and students, and the