Plot  Islamic Revolution of 1979  Azar Nafisi leaves her job at the University of Tehran  Begins teaching a select group of young female students in her living room, reading forbidden literature  Story tells the individual struggles of the women, the collective struggles of Iranians unwillingly controlled by their country’s actions, and the struggle for humans to connect to something greater than themselves

Texts/Authors & Structure of Text  Reading Lolita in Tehran  "Lolita" deals with Nafisi as she resigns from The University of Allameh Tabatabei and starts her private literature class with students Mahshid, Yassi, Mitra, Nassrin, Azin, Sanaz and Manna. They talk not just about Lolita, but One Thousand and One Nights and Invitation to a Beheading. The main themes are oppression, jailers as revolutionary guards try to assert their authority through certain events such as a vacation gone awry and a runaway convict.

Texts/Authors & Structure of Text  The Great Gatsby  "Gatsby" is set about eleven years before "Lolita" just as the Iranian revolution starts. The reader learns how some Iranians' dreams, including the author's, became shattered through the government's imposition of new rules. Nafisi's student Mr. Nyazi puts the novel on trial, claiming that it condones adultery. Chronologically this is the first part of Nafisi's story.  Nafisi states that the Gatsby chapter is about the American dream, the Iranian dream of revolution and the way it was shattered for her.

Texts/Authors & Structure of Text  James  "James" takes place right after "Gatsby", when the Iran–Iraq War begins and Nafisi is expelled from the University of Tehran along with a few other professors. The veil becomes mandatory and she states that the government wants to control the liberal-minded professors. Nafisi meets the man she calls her "magician", seemingly a literary academician who had retired from public life at the time of the revolution. Daisy Miller and Washington Square are the main texts.  The James chapter is about uncertainty and the way totalitarian mindsets hate uncertainty

Texts/Authors & Structure of Text  Austen  "Austen" succeeds "Lolita" as Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the girls discuss the issue of marriages, men and sex. The only real flashback (not counting historical background) is into how the girls and Nafisi toyed with the idea of creating a Dear Jane society. While Azin deals with an abusive husband and Nassrin plans to leave for England, Nafisi's magician reminds her not to blame all of her problems on the Islamic Republic. Pride and Prejudice, while the main focus, is used more to reinforce themes about blindness and empathy.  Austen is about the choice of women, a woman at the center of the novel saying no to the authority of her parents, society, and welcoming a life of dire poverty in order to make her own choice.

Themes and Core IdeasThemes and Core Ideas  What is oppression? What is authority?  What are heroes and villains in literature and in life?  Does every nation have their version of “the Dream?”  What choices can/do women make (and under what conditions)?  What role does the veil/hijab have in women’s lives? In government?  What is liberation?

Azar NafisiAzar Nafisi  Visiting Professor and the executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC  Professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics.  Held a fellowship at Oxford University, teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the revolution in 1979.

Azar NafisiAzar Nafisi  She taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai  1981, she was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and did not resume teaching until  Writes and lectures on the political implication of literature and culture, and the rights of women in Iran  Written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall St. Journal

Works CitedWorks Cited  "Azar Nafisi, Offical Website of the Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran." Azar Nafisi, Offical Website of the Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct  "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Aug Web. 15 Oct