What can you learn about Iran from this book?

Reading Lolita in Tehran is set during the period when the government in Iran is replaced by a fundamentalist Islamic regime. Nafisi, a university literature professor, traces how rights for women are severely curtailed. She is forced to move from wearing European style clothing and letting her hair go free to covering herself in the hijab to go out on the street. She talks about how letting a tendril of hair escape the veil becomes a subversive act.
During this time, Nafisi loses her university job because she is a woman and because the American and European literature she teaches is considered "decadent." Iraq and Iran also get into a war, so Nafisi must cope with bombing raids on Tehran.
While Nafisi concentrates on what it is like to survive in a country that has become a totalitarian state, she also describes some of the beauties of life in her country: the mountains she can see from her window ringing the city or the good coffee and pastries she and her former students eat as they get together to discuss literature in her apartment.

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