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Every Thursday morning in the mid-1990s, seven young women came to Azar Nafisi’s flat in Tehran, took off their headscarves and robes, and talked about novels the Islamic Republic had banned: Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Henry James, Jane Austen. Nafisi had been expelled from the University of Tehran in 1981 for refusing to wear the veil, and in 1997 she left Iran for the United States. Her account of those classes, Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), spent 117 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has been published in 32 languages. Every book she has written since asks the same question: what does fiction do for people who live without freedom? This guide covers her five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2003–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Azar Nafisi has published five key books in English: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008), The Republic of Imagination (2014), That Other World (2019) and Read Dangerously (2022). Start with Reading Lolita in Tehran, the memoir of her secret literature class; the later books carry the same argument to her own family, to America and to Nabokov.
Where to Start with Azar Nafisi
If you want her defining book
→ Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) — the secret reading class in 1990s Tehran.
If you want her family story
→ Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008) — her parents, and Iran before the revolution.
If you want her view of America
→ The Republic of Imagination (2014) — three American novels and what they say about the country.
If you want her case for reading now
→ Read Dangerously (2022) — letters to her late father about books and tyranny.
5 Azar Nafisi Books, in Order
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Nafisi’s account of teaching literature in Iran after the 1979 revolution, built around the private class she held at home with seven of her women students in the mid-1990s. Its four parts are named after Lolita, Gatsby, Henry James and Jane Austen, and include a classroom “trial” of The Great Gatsby. It became a long-running number one New York Times bestseller, The Times of London named it one of the 100 best books of the decade in 2009, and Eran Riklis adapted it as a film in 2024, with Golshifteh Farahani as Nafisi.
Things I’ve Been Silent About
A memoir of her childhood and family in Tehran: her father Ahmad Nafisi, who was mayor of the city and was later imprisoned, and her mother Nezhat, one of the first women elected to the Iranian parliament. The book is about a difficult marriage and a difficult mother as much as about politics, and it follows Nafisi from her schooling in England to her return to Iran in 1979. It was also a New York Times bestseller.
The Republic of Imagination
Written after she settled in the United States, the book reads the country through three of its novels: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt and Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Nafisi argues that a democracy which stops valuing fiction and the humanities loses something it needs, and mixes the readings with memories of Iran and of American friends.
That Other World
An English version of the study of Vladimir Nabokov’s novels that Nafisi first wrote and published in Persian in Iran in the 1990s, with a new introduction. It reads Nabokov as a writer of exile who rebuilt a lost world in fiction, and explains why his books meant so much to her and her students under the Islamic Republic.
Read Dangerously
Written as a series of letters to her late father, the book pairs writers with political crises: Salman Rushdie and the fatwa, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison on race in America, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin and others. Her argument is that authoritarian governments fear fiction because it shows people other ways of seeing, and that readers in democracies should take it just as seriously.
In What Order to Read Azar Nafisi
None of Nafisi’s books depends on another, but they share a voice and a cast: her parents, her students, the novels she keeps returning to. Reading in publication order lets you watch the setting move from Tehran to Washington while the question stays the same.
Start with Reading Lolita in Tehran, which introduces the people and books the others build on. Read Things I’ve Been Silent About next if you want the family background; leave That Other World until you have read some Nabokov, because it assumes you know the novels.
A reading path
1. Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)
2. Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008)
3. The Republic of Imagination (2014)
4. Read Dangerously (2022)
5. That Other World (2019)
Everything Else Azar Nafisi Published
Beyond the 5 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books
2
2 books · 1994–2004
- 1994Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novelsher Persian-language study of Nabokov, published in Iran; the basis of That Other World
- 2004BiBi and the Green Voicea picture book for children
The years · 1948–2024
Quick facts about Azar Nafisi
- Known for
- Azar Nafisi is known for writing about how reading forbidden Western novels helped her and her students keep their inner freedom in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- 1948
- Born in Tehran
- 1981
- Expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing the veil
- 1997
- Leaves Iran for the United States
- 2024
- The film adaptation wins the Audience Award in Rome
- Born
- Tehran, Iran, in 1948 (some sources give 1955)
- Parents
- Ahmad Nafisi, a former mayor of Tehran, and Nezhat Nafisi, one of Iran’s first women members of parliament
- Education
- Schooled in England from the age of 13; PhD from the University of Oklahoma
- Taught
- University of Tehran (expelled 1981), Allameh Tabatabai University, Oxford University
- Now
- Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., since 1997
- Honours
- Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award (2015) and several honorary doctorates
The red mark is 2003: Reading Lolita in Tehran, her memoir of the secret reading class.
How Azar Nafisi Writes: Memoir Through Other People’s Novels
Nafisi rarely writes about her life directly. She writes about books, and her life comes in through them: Reading Lolita in Tehran is organised by novel rather than by year, and each part uses one writer — Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, Austen — to look at what was happening to her students and to Iran at the time.
She was trained as a literature professor, and the books keep the habits of a seminar: close reading of scenes, arguments with students who disagree, set texts at the head of each section. The Republic of Imagination uses three American novels the same way, and Read Dangerously turns the method into letters, addressed to her late father, about writers who wrote under political pressure.
Her recurring theme is that fiction protects a private, inner life that governments cannot reach, which is why she keeps returning to Nabokov, a writer who lost his country and rebuilt it on the page. Her critics say this framing simplifies Iran; her readers say it explains why a novel can matter as much as a newspaper.
Frequently asked questions about Azar Nafisi’s books
How many books has Azar Nafisi written?
Seven. Five are the key books on this page, from Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003) to Read Dangerously (2022); the other two are her Persian-language study of Nabokov, Anti-Terra (1994), and a children’s book, BiBi and the Green Voice (2004).
What are Azar Nafisi’s books in order?
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008), The Republic of Imagination (2014), That Other World (2019) and Read Dangerously (2022).
Where should I start with Azar Nafisi?
With Reading Lolita in Tehran. It introduces her students, her family and the novels she writes about in every later book.
What is Azar Nafisi’s most famous book?
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003). It spent 117 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, has been published in 32 languages, and was named one of the 100 best books of the decade by The Times of London in 2009.
Is Reading Lolita in Tehran a true story?
Yes, it is a memoir. Nafisi taught literature in Iran after the 1979 revolution and held a private class at home with women students in the mid-1990s. She changed details and names to protect the students, several of whom were still in Iran when the book came out.
Is there a film of Reading Lolita in Tehran?
Yes. Eran Riklis directed the adaptation, with Golshifteh Farahani as Nafisi and Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Mina Kavani among the cast. It won the Audience Award and a special jury prize at the Rome Film Festival in 2024 and reached American cinemas in 2026.
Why was Azar Nafisi expelled from the University of Tehran?
She refused to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and was expelled in 1981. She went back to teaching in 1987, at other universities, and left Iran for the United States in 1997.
Why is Reading Lolita in Tehran controversial?
Some scholars criticised its politics. In 2006 the Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi argued in Al-Ahram Weekly that the book served American neoconservative aims towards Iran, and Fatemeh Keshavarz answered it in her book Jasmine and Stars (2007). Nafisi rejected the charge, and the book’s readers and critics remain divided on how fairly it portrays Iran.
Is Azar Nafisi still alive?
Yes. She lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In 2026 she gave interviews about the film adaptation of her memoir.
Which books are discussed in Reading Lolita in Tehran?
Mainly Nabokov’s Lolita and Invitation to a Beheading, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Henry James’s Daisy Miller and Washington Square, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Footnotes
- Azar Nafisi discusses the film of Reading Lolita in Tehran — NPR via WAMC, 2026
- Interview transcript — NPR, 2026
- Azar Nafisi — Georgetown University
- Azar Nafisi — Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
- Azar Nafisi — Wisconsin Book Festival
- Azar Nafisi — Penguin Random House
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“This is not a political fight. This is an existential one.”
— Azar Nafisi, on the mandatory headscarf, interview with Scott Simon, NPR (2026)
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