c. reviewed on 11/8/2006 + 9 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

An amazing account of a college professor's covert attempt to provide a good literary education to intelligent young women (and one man) in mid 1990's Tehran. If you're looking for a straight report on life in Iran, this might not be the book for you. If you're wondering how people try to maintain a good quality of life in repressive regimes, this might give you some insight. Because she is a professor of literature, the book also analyses many classics of Western literature.

As the author warns, the women of the book group are not Lolita, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not Humbert Humbert. But like the prisoner and her captor, there is a relationship between the book group and their repressive government that transforms them all.

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