Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008.
Nafisi has held several academic leadership roles, including director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.
She is the niece of a famous Iranian scholar, fiction writer and poet Saeed Nafisi. Azar Nafisi is best known for her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 117 weeks, and has won several literary awards, including the 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense.
In addition to Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi has authored, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, ''The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books and That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile. Her newest book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published March 8, 2022.
In 2024, Reading Lolita in Tehran'' was adapted into a film by director Eran Riklis. Golshifteh Farahani, one of the most well-known Iranian actresses, plays Nafisi in the film. Other cast members include Zar Amir Ebrahimi, and Mina Kavani.
Early life and education
Nafisi was born in Tehran, Iran. She is the daughter of Nezhat and Ahmad Nafisi, the former mayor of Tehran from 1961 to 1963. He was the youngest man ever appointed to the post at that time. In 1963, her mother was a member of the first group of women elected to the National Consultative Assembly.Nafisi was raised in Tehran, but when she was thirteen, she moved to Lancaster, England, to finish her studies. She then moved to Switzerland before returning to Iran briefly in 1963. She completed her degree in English and American literature and received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
Nafisi returned to Iran in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution and taught English literature at the University of Tehran. In 1981, she was expelled from the university for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil. Years later, during a period of liberalization, she began teaching at Allameh Tabataba'I University. In 1995, Nafisi sought to resign from her position, but the university did not accept her resignation. After repeatedly not going to work, they eventually expelled her, but refused her ability to resign.
From 1995 to 1997, Nafisi invited several female students to attend regular meetings at her house every Thursday morning. They discussed their place as women within post-revolutionary Iranian society. They studied literary works, including some considered "controversial" by the regime, such as Lolita alongside other works such as Madame Bovary. She also taught novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen, attempting to understand and interpret them from a modern Iranian perspective.
After staying in Iran for 18 years after the Revolution, Nafisi returned to the United States of America on June 24, 1997, and continues to reside there today.
Literary and academic work
In addition to her books, Nafisi has written for , , The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Her cover story, "The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution's Woman Problem," published in The New Republic has been reprinted in several languages. She also wrote the new introduction to the Modern Library Classics edition of Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, as well as the introduction to Iraj Pezeshkzad's My Uncle Napoleon, published by Modern Library. She has published a children's book BiBi and the Green Voice.She served as director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.
In 2003, Nafisi published Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. The book describes her experiences as a secular woman living and working in the Islamic Republic of Iran right after the Revolution. In 2008, Nafisi authored a memoir about her mother titled Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter.
On October 21, 2014, Nafisi authored The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, in which using The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt, and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, as well as the writings of James Baldwin and many others, Nafisi responds to an Iranian reader that questioned whether Americans care about or need their literature.
In 2019, the English translation of That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile was published by Yale University Press. Nafisi's forthcoming book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published on March 8, 2022.
Nafisi has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture. She often writes about totalitarian tendencies in both Iran and the U.S. She has been consulted on issues related to Iran and human rights by policymakers and various national and international human rights organizations.
She has won numerous awards for her writing and ideas. In 2011, she was awarded the Cristóbal Gabarrón Foundation International Thought and Humanities Award for her "determined and courageous defense of human values in Iran and her efforts to create awareness through literature about the situation women face in Islamic society".
She also received the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award.
Critical response
Nafisi's books have received critical acclaim from authors, publishing houses, and newspapers.Reading Lolita in Tehran
Michiko Kakutani described Reading Lolita in Tehran in The New York Times Book Review as "resonant and deeply affecting… an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction-- on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual". Stephen Lyons for USA Today called the book "an inspiring account of an insatiable desire for intellectual freedom in Iran", and Publishers Weekly said of Reading Lolita, "This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three." Kirkus Reviews called Reading Lolita, "A spirited tribute both to the classics of world literature and to resistance against oppression."
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaids Tale, reviewed Nafisi's book for the Literary Review of Canada, stating that, "Reading Lolita in Tehran is both a fascinating account of how she arrived at this belief and a stunning dismissal of it. All readers should read it. As for writers, it reminds us, with great eloquence, that our words may travel farther and say more than we could ever guess when we wrote them."
Things I've Been Silent About
After reviewing Things I've Been Silent About, The New York Times Book Review called Nafisi "a gifted storyteller with a mastery of Western literature, Nafisi knows how to use the language both to settle scores and to seduce". Kirkus Reviews called the book "an immensely rewarding and beautifully written act of courage, by turns amusing, tender and obsessively dogged".
The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Iranian French novelist Marjane Satrapi's review of The Republic of Imagination, says, "We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi's Republic of Imagination. Without imagination, there are no dreams; without dreams, there is no art; without art, there is nothing. Her words are essential."
Kirkus Reviews said the book is "a passionate argument for returning to key American novels to foster creativity and engagement… Literature writes Nafisi, is deliciously subversive because it fires the imagination and challenges the status quo… Her literary exegesis lightly moves through her experience as a student, teacher, friend, and new citizen. Touching on myriad examples, from L. Frank Baum to James Baldwin, her work is poignant and informative."
Jane Smiley wrote in The Washington Post that Nafisi "finds the essence of the American experience, filtered through narratives not about exceptionalism or fabulous success, but alienation, solitude and landscape". Laura Miller of Salon wrote that "No one writes better or more stirringly about the way books shape a reader's identity, and about the way that talking books with good friends becomes integral to how we understand the books, our friends and ourselves.
She appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and PBS NewsHour to promote the book.
That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile
American literary critic Gary Saul Morson described That Other World as "somewhere between a first-person encounter with literature and a critical study; this book reminds us of how meaningful literature can be".
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
Publishers Weekly authored a starred review of Nafisi's forthcoming Read Dangerously, calling it a "stunning look at the power of reading" and characterizing Nafisi's prose as "razor-sharp". The Progressive Magazine printed that Read Dangerously lives up to its audacious title, demonstrating the subversive and transformative power of literature. It should start many a book-based conversation among the living and the dead."
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Film
The Atlantic said in a January 2025 review, that the "film and book avoid didacticism. And in doing so, they demonstrate exactly the point Nafisi explores with her students, which is the power of literature to stir empathy across seemingly unbridgeable divides." Variety described the film as "a respectable, aptly rebellious and deeply feminine exercise."