As an instructor, Nafisi used literary works to teach her students about English literature, as well as to teach them to think and to educate themselves. When her students questioned the morality of Jay Gatsby, Nafisi encouraged them to put Fitzgerald's book on trial. The resulting "trial" is as insightful for the reader of this book as it must have been for the students who participated.

Nafisi's love of literature and commitment to teaching lead her to invite a group of former students to her home to meet and discuss literary works. These classes were held in secret because the works discussed were banned (there were morality squads throughout Tehran). The class participants were all women because it was too dangerous to hold mixed gender, non-family gatherings. Through their meetings, and their discussions of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Austen, James and other western writers, the students opened up to the literature and each other; they also came to understand themselves. Nafisi expertly weaves powerful accounts of the repression of women under the totalitarian government with mesmerizing discussions of literary classics. Nabokov's Lolita, James' Daisy Miller, and the women of Austen are contrasted with the lives of the author and her students.

Nabokov once said, "Readers are born free and they ought to remain free." Nafisi describes the impact of the Iranian government's attempts to deny that freedom. Her book offers a rare glimpse inside Iran from a woman's point of view. The strength of the women struggling to regain their freedom and individuality makes it a glimpse that no reader should miss.