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Reading Lolita in Tehran
400 pages; Random House Trade Paperbacks
Why We Love It: Nafisi's Thursday-morning book club brought the forbidden classics of Western literature to women in Iran. While she opened these women's minds and liberated them to speak freely among themselves, she also opened our minds, showing us their inner world.

The Sequel: Nafisi's book was published in 2008. In her most recent title, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (2014), she made the case for American women to rediscover the classics, and for readers worldwide to join a "republic" of free minds. Wouldn't it be beautiful if Nafisi's vision came to fruition? The sequel could be: The Thursday-Morning Book Club, set everywhere on earth, everyone invited.  
— Dawn Raffel