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Azar NafisiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Azar Nafisi was born in Tehran, the capital of Iran, in 1948. She describes her family as an old and distinguished one: “[A]s far back as eight hundred years ago […] the Nafisis were known for their contributions to literature and science” (84). Both her mother and father were educated and politically active individuals under the reign of the Shah, with her father serving as mayor of Tehran and her mother acting as a member of the National Consultative Assembly in the 1960s.
Nafisi depicts her upbringing as both cultured and highly privileged. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, she recalls her father reading classic Iranian poetry to her at bedtime, thereby providing an early introduction to literary culture. She spent her childhood being educated abroad in private boarding schools in England and Switzerland. She studied in the United States as a university student, eventually returning to Iran as a professor of English literature.
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