Azar Nafisi

Who is Azar Nafisi?

Azar Nafisi, born ca. 1947, is an Iranian academic and bestselling writer who has resided in the United States since 1997 when she emigrated from Iran. Her field is English language literature. Nafisi's 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books has been translated into 32 languages. It was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 117 weeks, and has won numerous literary awards, including the 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense. The book also led to controversy about Nafisi's alleged connections to neoconservatism and colonialism. She published an autobiography, Things I've been silent about: memories of a prodigal daughter, focusing on the impact on her throughout her life of her relations with her parents and of decades of political upheaval in Iran, including the father's incarceration under the Shah on trumped-up charges of financial irregularities.

Nafisi has been a visiting fellow and lecturer at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and served on the Board of Trustees of Freedom House.