Azar Nafisi is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in Tehran in 1948, she has resided in the United States since 1997 and became a U.S. citizen in 2008. Nafisi is best known for her memoir, which chronicles her experiences teaching literature in Iran during the post-revolutionary period. The work explores themes of intellectual freedom, the power of literature, and resistance to censorship through her personal narrative of conducting clandestine reading groups with female students.