Every Thursday morning for two years, Azar Nafisi, a brave and brilliant Iranian professor, secretly gathers seven of her brightest students at her home to read forbidden books: works by Jane Austen, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and of course, Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita. As the young women gradually express themselves through the books, they realize how their own lives begin to transform and intertwine with the plots of the works they immerse themselves in.