Lolita lesen in Teheran

Overwhelming. A literary lifeboat on the sea of Iranian fundamentalism. Margaret Atwood. When Iranian literature professor Azar Nafisi decides she can no longer wear the veil, she is expelled from the University of Tehran – and fulfills a dream. For two years, she and seven of her best students secretly meet every Thursday morning to read forbidden classics of Western literature. Through the works of Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, Henry James, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, they create spaces of freedom within the constraints imposed upon them by the Islamic Republic of Iran. From the black-veiled shadows that sneak into her house, they transform into young women in jeans and colorful dresses. They open up in discussions about the literary works and begin to question and change their own reality, which they had long felt powerless and voiceless against.