"Lolita" deals with Nafisi as she resigns from The University of Allameh Tabatabei and starts her private literature class with students Mahshid, Yassi, Mitra, Nassrin, Azin, Sanaz and Manna.

Nafisi states that the Gatsby chapter is about the American dream, the Iranian dream of revolution and the way it was shattered for her; the James chapter is about uncertainty and the way totalitarian mindsets hate uncertainty; and Austen is about the choice of women, a woman at the center of the novel saying no to the authority of her parents, society, and welcoming a life of dire poverty in order to make her own choice.

"Austen" succeeds "Lolita" as Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the girls discuss the issue of marriages, men and sex.

While Azin deals with an abusive husband and Nassrin plans to leave for England, Nafisi's magician reminds her not to blame all of her problems on the Islamic Republic.

The title refers to Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, a story about a middle aged man who has a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old pubescent girl.

The author implies that, like the principal character in Lolita, the newly formed Islamic government in Iran imposes its own "dream upon our reality, turning us into his figments of imagination.

"[5] Nafisi's account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations.

"[10] To The New York Times, Nafisi stated that "[p]eople from my country have said the book was successful because of a Zionist conspiracy and U.S. imperialism, and others have criticized me for washing our dirty laundry in front of the enemy.

[12] Nafisi's memoir of her life during the revolution and the years following caused many reactions from a wide range of perspectives—from the libertarian Reason magazine, the conservative American Enterprise, to the liberal Nation.

Many comments and reviews alike note the importance of the existence of literature as a mode of refuge from tyranny and oppression, in turn giving faith to the voice of an individual.

[13] In a critical article published in the academic journal Comparative American Studies titled 'Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran', Head of the North American Studies Department at University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi argued that "Nafisi constantly confirms what orientalist representations have regularly claimed" and argued she "has produced gross misrepresentations of Iranian society and Islam and that she uses quotes and references which are inaccurate, misleading, or even wholly invented.

"[15] Fatemeh Keshavarz, Director of the Roshan Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland and creator of "Windows on Iran," titled her analysis of Iranian culture "Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran" in response to what she saw as systematic orientalism in Nafisi's book.

They suggested that her book informed United States's involvement in Iran in particular and President Bush's foreign policy goals in general.

In his June 1, 2006 critical essay, "Native informers and the making of the American empire" published in the Egyptian English weekly Al-Ahram[17] Dabashi wrote, "By seeking to recycle a kaffeeklatsch version of English literature as the ideological foregrounding of American empire, Reading Lolita in Tehran is reminiscent of the most pestiferous colonial projects of the British in India, when for example, in 1835 a colonial officer like Thomas Macaulay decreed: 'We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect.'

In a subsequent interview with Z Magazine, Dabashi compared Nafisi to former American soldier Lynndie England, who was convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

[18] Dabashi and several other scholars have also noted the ways that the simplistic portrayal of Iranian society and framing of Afghan women as helpless victims sustains momentum for U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

"[18][20] Ali Banuazizi, the co-director of Boston College’s Middle East studies program, stated that Dabashi's article was "intemperate" and that it was "not worth the attention" it had received.

Like the late Edward Said, he brands every thought he dislikes as an example of imperialism, expressing the West's desire for hegemony over the downtrodden (even when oil-rich) nations of the Third World.

Papan Matin also argued that "Dabashi’s attack is that whether Nafisi is a collaborator with the [United States]" was not relevant to the legitimate questions set forth in her book.