IU Associate Professor Paul Losensky will discuss Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi later this spring as part of this year's One Book One Bloomington events. Watch the Libraries homepage for more details.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran (nonfiction, 2003), Nafisi writes of leading a clandestine book group, discussing Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, and others, in mid-1990s Iran.

Losensky teaches Persian and comparative literature at IU and is jointly appointed to the Departments of Central Eurasian Studies and Comparative Literature. He made extended visits to Iran in 1998 and 2000, the second as the first Tehran representative of the American Institute of Iranian Studies since the revolution. He thinks the book needs to be situated in a larger context, both as an account of modern Iran and as an account of literature.

For more information about the book and local events, including resource and discussion guides, go to www.artlives.org/obob.html.

One Book, One Bloomington, supported by the Bloomington Area Arts Council, Indiana Arts Commission, and 1st Books, encourages communitywide reading of an influential book. What if all of Bloomington read the same book?