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Bright Red Lipsticks Under the Veils

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, 2003
Azar Nafisi tells the story of her life in Iran before & after the Islamic revolution. She teaches English at the University of Tehran without wearing a veil until she's expelled (though she claims she resigned beforehand). She decides to run an English class in the privacy of her home, every Thursday, for a select group of women, so they can study various novels banned by the Iranian regime. She becomes close to these women, hears their tragic stories, then decides to bugger off to America with her family. The End.

This memoir is part unreliable narrator (which makes the title oh-so-ironic), part intriguing study of a woman's life under strict Islamic law, and part lit criticism on key Western novels (e.g. Lolita, Pride & Prejudice, and Great Gatsby.) It could have done with tighter editing and a more comprehensible chronology; it could have also done with less flights-of-fancy and more objectivity on the part of the author.

A decent introduction to Iran and its regime's nefarious persecution of women.