For me, the most fascinating aspect of Reading Lolita in Teheran, was the way these women interpreted the novels--in a manner entirely different from someone in the West, borne of their particular experience as women in a repressive society that evinced so much fear of and hostility toward them. Thus, for example, they could identify with Lolita, a character who's life is stolen from her by Humbert Humbert (surely one of the most loathesome characters in fiction), in a way that I, as a victim of neither sexual, political nor religious abuse never could. And they could regard Humbert perhaps not as a literal Ayatollah Khomeini (Nafisi makes it clear that such literalism should be shunned), but could see how, in an effort to control them body and soul, his regime has objectified and harmed them, much like Humbert had tried to own and had hurt Lolita. The irony, of course, is that he never owned her at all. For a time he may have possessed her body, but she always kept the most essential part of herself out of reach, and he never even came close to possessing her soul.

Verdict: Nafisi deftly exposes the horrors of living under a totalitarian regime and its reign of terror. The pettiness; the small-mindedness; the brutality; the way it always keeps people off balance by ignoring the rules one day and enforcing them to the letter--often with beatings or a death sentence--the next; the disdain for women that expresses itself as a desire to control the minutae of their lives--all in all, a depressing, soul-destroying, spirit-benumbing existence: essentially, Hell on Earth. That said, in my book group, mine was a minority opinion. Everyone else thought it pretentious, boring and poorly written. They had a visceral dislike for Nafisi and were incensed that she seemed to be trying to teach them something that, clearly, they didn't want to learn. I tried to make the case for Nafisi, but gave up when I realized there was no point: for whatever reason, we seem to have read a completely different book.

Book Three: The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

When I was in journalism school eons ago, there was a term for events that were so remote and tangential as to be of limited if any interest. The term was "Afghanistanism", referring to the mountainous, Islamic kingdom tucked away somewhere with all the other "stans" in the then Soviet Union. Not long after, of course, Afghanistanism became an anachronism, as events suddenly shifted the country front and centre into the world's consciousness. First came the Soviet invasion, accompanied by U.S. support for Soviet enemies, the mjahedeen. Ultimately, that merry band of jihadis, most from far away Arab lands, succeeded in ousting one of the world's two superpowers and installing some home-grown Islamists in its place--the Taliban. A sunni version of Muslim fascism--as opposed to the shia fascists of Iran--the Taliban initially offered Afghanis some hope of stability in a war-torn and exhausted country. It soon became apparent, though, that the Taliban were not saviors but wicked overlords determined to beat down an already defeated populace in the name of imposing a "pure" Muslim state. Their downfall came when they offered safe haven to Osama bin Laden, who, in his arrogance and triumphalism, was convinced he could defeat the world's sole remaining superpower as easily as the Taliban had trounced the Soviets. His miscalculation cost his sponsors their hold on power, and he has been on the run ever since.