Reading Lolita in Tehran drew admirers around the world when it came out in 2003. A rousing account of young women secretly gathering to read Western classics—against the dictates of a repressive regime in Iran—the book was appealing to anyone who believed in the power of literature and the fundamental principle that anyone should have the right to access it. As Azar Nafisi writes, Vladimir Nabokov’s titular novel was “not a critique of the Islamic Republic, but it went against the grain of all totalitarian perspectives.”
In 2008 Nafisi became a citizen of the United States, a country she had come to know and love through its books. Last year, Reading Lolita in Tehran was adapted into a film. Its making embodied a spirit of cross-border cooperation—it stars Iranian actresses, and the director, Eran Riklis, is Israeli. The film screened at the Rome Film Festival, where it won the audience award. A day earlier, on Oct. 26, Israel had launched strikes against Iran (and Iraq and Syria).
Nafisi was in Rome for the event. “This is what I wanted to bring to Reading Lolita,” she said in comments reported by Variety. “I wanted the West to know that the Israeli government and the Iranian government are creating wars not just in their own land, but in the region.…And we the people should do as these girls did in the book and in the film. We should send this message that hate will not work.”
John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.
