Azar Nafisi, an Iranian Academic

¶ … Azar Nafisi, an Iranian academic who taught in Tehran both before and after the fundamentalist revolution, the primary contribution of literature to human life is its ability to teach students how to think critically about their environment and to appreciate their integrity as individuals. In an oppressive society, reading individualistic literature is a radical act, perhaps even more radical than overt political action. When reading Lolita, the author's students do not read Vladimir Nabokov in a prurient way. Rather, they read themselves into the text in a creative fashion, while still appreciating Nabokov's gifts as a writer. Over the course of her text, Nafisi demonstrates the contribution of her small reading group to the study of literature and also defends Western literature as both universal and relevant to Iranian politics, paradoxically because of its ability to transcend time and place and to reveal the importance of the individual human character.

Nabokov's tale relates the exploitation of a young, American teenager at the hands of an older European man. It is told from the perspective of Humbert, Lolita's molester. One way, the fundamentalist way, would be to read the text as simply immoral and sexual. Another way is to see Lolita as simply uninteresting, and instead to focus on Humbert's twisted psychology. But the girls can read the text from Lolita's point-of-view. They can appreciate her powerlessness, as they are powerless in the context of a state, held in the force of an oppressive regime even if the book is not explicitly about Iran.

Nafisi defends her choice of European classics because they uphold the integrity of the individual, and the individual was given scant appreciation in Tehran at the time. A pro-Revolutionary Iranian might have suggested an uplifting, dull theological text as appropriate reading for the girls. An anti-Iranian activist might have suggested a political tract against the regime should have been the focus of the group's secret reading.