However, it is in their mutual interest in the slippery processes of reading and writing—Nafisi's characters read from the canon of great Western literature, Hosseini's protagonist is a writer—that both texts expose the expedient and questionable nature of their judgments. The truth claims of these two exhibits in the court of world opinion are thus exposed as ideologically sealed but at the same time never watertight.

XREF: Connects to broader postcolonial critique of how Western-reading novels perform authenticity for global audiences — echoes Edward Said's orientalism framework.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 67