Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. The bestseller electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. The book spent over 117 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, has been translated into 32 languages, and has won diverse literary awards, including the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense, the Frederic W. Ness Book Award, the Latifeh Yarsheter Book Award, the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, and an achievement award from the American Immigration Law Foundation, as well as being a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Memoir. In 2006 she won a Persian Golden Lioness Award for Literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media.
Nafisi is currently a Visiting Professor and the director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy In