I went into this memoir hoping for an in-depth look at what it means to risk reading forbidden books in Iran, with a little discussion of the literature on the side. What I found was an in-depth look at the literature with some side discussion of what it means to be reading it in Iran. This isn't an inherently bad thing--I have read Lolita, so I appreciated some of the literary analysis of it--but it wasn't what I came for. And, not having read some of the other books that were going to be discussed further in this memoir, I felt that I wouldn't appreciate or understand some of the analysis to come. When the book would veer toward the stories of the women and life in Iran, all too soon it would swing back to literary analysis--and it wasn't always related to the unique experience of reading it while living in tyranny. I didn't finish this one.