Nafisi’s memoir claims a fictional Tehran location

Evidence

The location Nafisi claims by virtue of her bestselling book is, in fact, fictitious: it purports to be Tehran, but the book was actually written in Washington DC. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 236

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific fact that Reading Lolita in Tehran was written in DC while purporting to be set in Tehran is a pointed detail worth sharing with anyone interested in exile literature or memoir ethics.
• QUESTION: Is the physical writing location really central to the memoir’s value? Worth probing whether this critique is fair or overstated.