Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi | |
|---|---|
 Nafisi at the 2015 Texas Book Festival. | |
| Born | Persian: آذر نفیسی |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | University of Oklahoma |
| Occupations | Writer, professor |
| Writing career | |
| Language | English |
| Notable work | Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books |
| Notable awards | 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award (Booksense), Persian Golden Lioness Award |
Azar Nafisi (Persian: آذر نفیسی) is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran, Iran, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008.
Nafisi has held several academic leadership roles, including director of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dialogue Project and Cultural Conversations, a Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service, Centennial Fellow, and a fellow at Oxford University.
Nafisi is best known for her 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 117 weeks. In 2024 it was adapted into a film. Nafisi also authored Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books and That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile. Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times was published on 8 March 2022. She has won several literary awards.