Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. The book has spent over 117 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has been translated in 32 languages, and has won diverse literary awards. In 2006 Nafisi won a Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media.