Background and career
Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی) is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008.
Nafisi has held several academic leadership roles, including director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.
Nafisi is best known for her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 117 weeks. In 2024 it was adapted into a film. Nafisi also authored Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books and That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile. Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published on 8 March 2022. She has won several literary awards.

.jpg?width=480)
.jpg?width=480)
.jpg?width=480)
.jpg?width=480)