We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true.

For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.

Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.

Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.

阿紮爾•納菲西（Azar Nafisi）

伊朗裔美國女作傢、學者、評論傢。

1955年生於伊朗，13歲赴海外留學，26歲時獲得美國俄剋拉荷馬州立大學文學博士學位。後歸國任教於德黑蘭大學等三所高校，但因在女性的穿著與行為等問題上與校方産生嚴重分歧而被辭退。1997年納菲西返迴美國，以訪問學者的身份就職於約翰•霍普金斯大學。

除此書以外，納菲西還在《紐約時報》、《華盛頓郵報》、《華爾街日報》等主流媒體上發錶文化批評專欄，如今已成為美國炙手可熱的評論傢。