Azar Nafisi (آذر نفیسی in Persian) (born circa 1955) is a Iranian born professor and writer who currently lives in the United States. Nafisi gained fame in 2003, with her book . She is currently a Visiting Fellow and lecturer at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

Nafisi was an English literature professor at the University of Tehran (And later Allameh Tabatabaii University ). Having witnessed the Iranian revolution and consequential rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, Nafisi grew tired of the rules posted upon women by her country's rulers. Nafisi had visited the United States several times before the revolution, and she appreciated the freedom that women in other countries had.

Because of her discomfort with the laws established towards Iranian women after the revolution, she quit teaching in college during 1995, going on to do what would be considered by many to be a daring move: After quitting her job, she invited seven of her best female students to secretly attend regular meetings at her house, every Thursday morning. They would study such books as Lolita and Madame Bovary, literary works considered controversial and even dangerous to read in Iranian society, among others such as The Great Gatsby, and novels from Henry James and Jane Austen, considering them in the Islamic Republic's context.

Nafisi left Iran on June 24, 1997, moving to the United States, where she became close friends with the controversial Paul Wolfowitz, who introduced her to the writings of Leo Strauss. Encouraged by Wolfowitz, among others, to write about her experiences, Nafisi wrote the bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books, a book where she shares her experiences as a woman in Iran. In the book, she declares "I left Iran, but Iran did not leave me". She is the daughter of Ahmad Nafisi , a mayor of Tehran, and Nezhat Nafisi , who was among the first women to be elected to the Iranian parliament. Nafisi is married to Bijan Naderi, and has two children, Negar and Dara.

External link

• Nafisi's Dialogue Project