This document synthesizes the core themes and narrative arcs from Azar Nafisi's memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. The memoir chronicles the author's experience teaching Western literature to a select group of seven female students in her Tehran home amidst the oppressive political and social climate of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The central thesis is that works of imagination—specifically Western novels—provided a crucial sanctuary and a powerful form of resistance against a totalitarian regime determined to confiscate individual identity.

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