Nafisi has taught at universities in Iran, was a journalist in the United States and is visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University. She also wrote a critical study of Vladimir Nabokov's works, Anti-Terra (1994).
Whilst describing the everyday life issues (of women in Iran) under oppression and censure, she includes biographical insight into Nabokov and his experience during the Russian Revolution when he started writing and later and how it affected his outlook on life. Nafisi and her students can personally relate to him, he seems to have embodied the hopes and dreams of these Iranian girls who clandestinely gather weekly to study literature. She also discusses works by Henry James, Jane Austen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
