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To read a book about women who read Lolita in Tehran is to open the window to a world of dismay, in which even an act so pure and simple as enjoying fiction is considered treason, punishable by the wrongly proclaimed authorities in your life. I am constantly on the lookout for books which challenge my view of the world, or who have the power to paint a picture of another way of life, that I have been fortunate enough to never experience. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is one of those books.

By no means am I stating that this is a perfect book. Far from it. A five star rating does not excuse shabby writing or clichee moments; it rather includes them. A good writer must, beyond everything else, convey a message by way of building a world. Azar Nafisi is a good writer.

This work forces you to take your clothes off at the door, just as her students did their chadors when they entered her Thursday classes in her house. You cannot walk through it if you are clothed in all of your opinions, beliefs and thoughts as if they were an armor. This is not the place to stand up and voice your point of view - this is the place to sit down and listen attentively as someone else teaches you about their way of life.

The timeline of this work encapsulates most of Nafisi's life as a liberal literature teacher in Tehran, living under constant pressure and threat because of the audacity she had to teach works of fiction that didn't support a political agenda: Nabokov, Austen, James, Fitzgerald, the list goes on. She encouraged her students to discuss the works of fiction not as if they were supposed to have real ties to the world, but as if they were only an exercise of imagination, directed at making us better people by increasing our ability to empathize with others. Nafisi was lucky - although here, as she says, the concept of fortune receives a very weird meaning - because she kept her life and integrity in a time when so many lost theirs. She paints a picture for the reader of the life she led, as well as the different lives of her female students who ended up following her in her home after she gave up formal teaching. In that room with a mirror in which the reflection of the mountains was hanged like a painting, they drank coffee, ate pastry and discussed their situation by discussing the characters in all of the books that had been denied by the regime.

I've read some reviews on the book and many readers were put off by the 'tone' which Nafisi uses, giving herself more importance than maybe she had, speaking of her acts as if they were revolutionary. Yes, she does. Because yes, they were. In a world where reading fiction can get you killed, reading fiction becomes a revolution in itself. I only read and felt the voice of a woman who, without thinking about the consequences, tried to keep as much of her integrity as possible, whilst pursuing her passion: teaching. Her situation had been different than the other girls', and she had been more fortunate in growing up in a liberal family. But the courage to act in a repressive system does not base itself on who you were in the past: it has everything to do with who you choose to be in this very second. A good teacher must show you what you yourself can be capable of. Nafisi was a good teacher.

I'm confident that this should be read by women all across the world, especially in the times that we live in. For someone who has a better-than-average knowledge of the social and cultural system of Islam in relation to women, I still found it a wonderfully eye-opening read.