Incensed when a government official hailed the conservative newspaper Kayhan as a paragon of dissent, a 20-year-old who lives in Southern Iran logged on to a popular website.
The praise for the state-controlled daily was "the biggest political joke of the year," Ali wrote in a message posted on his profile. "I can't believe what a stupid nation we have and what a stupid president we have and that people are still following him."
The post set off a debate about freedom of speech and censorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where criticism of the government is rarely welcome and the outspoken are often punished. The cynics on www.goodreads.com didn't pull their punches.
They were angry, amused and dispirited. "People have reached a point in our country," wrote a student who called herself Fatemah, "where they don't do anything about their own destiny."
Unexpectedly, Goodreads -- a year-old networking site for book lovers run out of Santa Monica -- has become a place where young people in Iran feel safe letting off political steam. A year after its launch, Goodreads' membership is more than one-fifth Iranian.
Like readers the world over, those from Iran recommend, review and rate books. Their second-favorite, after "The Da Vinci Code," is George Orwell's anti-totalitarian novel "Animal Farm."
But on the site's Persian-language groups, literature isn't always the main subject.
"Usually, they discuss political issues," said Maysam Shahsavari, a student from Qazvin, a city northwest of Tehran, about the students in the 321-member Iranian University Students group she created on the site.
In November, a photo of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looking with apparent puzzlement at a water spigot was posted on the site after he visited a rural part of the country. More than two dozen comments were made in response.
"A pretentious and cunning fox," wrote Mehdi, a 23-year-old living in Karaj, near Tehran.
"Great pretender," wrote Katayoun, a 23-year-old studying for an MBA in Britain.
Even religion isn't off-limits on Goodreads. In one discussion group, a member listed incidents in the Koran that he said were too fanciful to be believed, including passages about supernatural creatures called jinn and people being turned into monkeys.
