Part 1: Chapter 5 Summary

The students were somewhat nervous and self-conscious as they were not used to meeting in this somewhat strange, somewhat dangerous private setting. Nafisi reminded them of Nabakov, who continued to write as bullets flew outside his window. Nafisi quotes Nabakov: "Readers were born free and ought to remain free."

The first work for the class to consider is A Thousand and One Nights, in which a king slays a succession of virgin wives in revenge for the queen's betrayal. Nafisi contends that the virgin wives have been ignored by most critics. They give their lives without resistance or protest. Nafisi asks the students to analyze this tale according to the types of women described in it.

In his Invitation to a Beheading, Nabakov invented a word: Upsilamba. One of the students, remembering the word from Nafisi's regular class, blurted it out...