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As great a work as the authors she taught If it were possible to give this book more stars I would! It is incredible! It is intense and I have not yet finished it. I am savoring every word. Reading the book is a bit of an adventure. I feel like I am actually in the author's presence. I fill up with tears after some readings, anger after others. But it seems the author has used and infused the book with literature's soul. Let me explain. Literature and art speak to our hearts. Literature helped soften the hard times for Azar and she used it to give meaning to her students when all about them was falling apart. At the time of the Iranian revolution, people needed art more than anything, to warm their hearts, which the regime was trying to turn to stone. Bombs were dropping, people were being coerced to serve a barebones ideology to which they did not adhere. Reading was one of the few pastimes left them. Reading meant focusing one's thoughts elsewhere. "If we create and see beauty in our minds..." I think that that is how our author survived this period and how she helped others survive. She fed them with hope, with other ideals, teaching them critical thinking. From where I am standing she must have been a lighthouse to many. Every time I put the book down I am so grateful that she was there during this time, not for herself but for all whom she touched, moved, encouraged by spreading art, beauty, human warmth. The book has many sides to it. It is an incredible recounting of the Iranian revolution, the desire for the Islamic religion to so earnestly "control" everything around it that it ended up losing all control. It is a glimpse of humanity, of our need to make sense of the senseless, of how fanaticism holds its own demise. We watch and feel the life force fading. I have under-lined many passages from this incredible book. Toward the end we read: "lack of empathy was to my mind the central sin of the regime, from which all the others flowed..." She goes on to say that at least her generation had known freedom and lost it, but at least they COULD remember. But what about the present generation...? I cannot recommend this book highly enough: On a literary level it draws many parallels and re-ignited my interest in authors I had only skimmed over in college; on an historical level it tells about what happened in this country, to its inhabitants, their culture, and how horribly bleak life became for all of them; on a personal level the books draws you in and makes you participate, despite yourself, if you are willing, takes you on the roller coaster ride of what life was like, but always Ms. Nafisi manages to give glimpses of beauty, meaning, hope to us the readers, as well as to all those she touched with her teachings, her literature, her art. She is like Scheherazade, whom she portrays in the beginning of the book: Scheherazade breaks the cycle of violence by choosing to embrace different terms of engage-ment. She fashions her universe not through physical force, as does the king, but through imagination and reflection. This gives her the courage to risk her life... There are many courageous people in the world who stand up, speak out, and help protect and foster humanness. Ms Nafisi is definitely one of those fine people and an incredibly, great author here!