When Azar Nafisi asks Iranian students to read novels like Lolita, she brings into an Iranian milie1.1 the values of the West-values that many Iranians would find shocking, perhaps even obscene....

When Azar Nafisi asks Iranian students to read novels like Lolita, she brings into an Iranian milie1.1 the values of the West-values that many Iranians would find shocking, perhaps even obscene. Although Nafisi does not give the details, the novel actually involves a love affair bet\veen a middle-aged professor of literature and a 12-year-old girl. By exposi11g her students co a way of thinking tmlike their own, Nafisi might be accused of something like the cultural insensitivity Watters finds troubling in the marketi11g of antidepressants. Are che two cases actualJy equivalent? Is Nafisi engaged in the same sort of cultural aggression? When is it acceptable to transfom1 a society's core beliefs?