In the epilogue to "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" (Random House, $13.95 paperback, 356 pages), Azar Nafisi writes that she left Iran on June 24, 1997, "for the green light that Gatsby once believed in." Her next paragraph begins, "I left Iran, but Iran did not leave me."

It is those seemingly contradictory desires -- for Western literature and for her native country -- that animate Nafisi's life and her remarkable book, an account of secretly teaching novels by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and Austen to a group of women in Iran. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" was one of the best books of 2003 and is a breakout success in paperback. Nafisi, tired but energized after speaking to large crowds in Boston and Philadelphia, spoke from her home outside Washington, D.C.

Who is reading your book?

It's mixed. The book groups are almost all women, but at the talks I'm giving I find a lot of people who are interested in classic literature.

What about Iranian Americans?

Lots of younger Iranian Americans are interested in finding out what's going on in their country, and I'm meeting lots of old students and friends I knew when I lived there. This morning a boy of 14 came up to me and touchingly, haltingly asked me in Persian where I was from in Iran and told me he was from the same region.

And women . . .

Yes, lots of women empathize with the experiences I had in Iran, refusing to wear the veil and so on, and talk to me about the way they coped when they lived there.

Has your book made it into Iran, that you're aware of?

Yes, I've heard from friends who've sent books into Iran that it's been received there, and I know from getting e-mail and from hearing from others that many people have accessed and read the first part of the book on the Internet.

Is the Internet widely used in Iran?

Yes, and it's made for a much more productive dialogue between (those outside Iran) and people there. It feels like you can say whatever you want, and they hear it.

Aren't there restrictions on its use?

There have been some attempts, but none of them have worked. So many people in the government use it, it's hard for anyone to control. There are many, many Web sites (in Persian), and some of the most successful communications have been blogs. It's not just used for political (subjects), but for people just talking about their personal lives.

Do you think that this will help lead to change?

It's one of the things that makes me feel optimistic. It's opened an amazing space that I never would have imagined when I lived there. There's no way the government can censor the world out of people's living rooms. This is true for other countries, too, like China.

Nafisi discusses "Reading Lolita in Tehran" at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, at Annie Bloom's Books, 7834 S.W. Capitol Highway.