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Kentucky Author Forum Presents

Civil rights reporter Karl Fleming interviews Azar Nafisi about life in Iran and the secret book club she started to help her keep hope alive in a desperate time. Nafisi was teaching English literature at the University of Tehran when the revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Fired for refusing to wear a veil, she began a book discussion group with some of her female students. Risking raids from Islamic morality squads, the girls removed their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimer Nabokov. Nafisi's memoir of that time, Reading Lolita in Tehran, illuminates how the power of literature nurtured their imaginations and hope amid the growing loss of freedom in their daily lives.