Summary: Ten years ago, "Reading Lolita in Tehran" told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, Nafisi taught "The Great Gatsby" and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this follow-up, Nafisi writes an impassioned and original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. What “Reading Lolita in Tehran" was for Iran, "The Republic of Imagination "is for America. Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle, where a skeptical reader told her that Americans don't care about books the way they did back in Iran, she energetically responds to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite American novels -- "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “Babbitt,"and "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," among others -- she invites us to join her as citizens of her "Republic of Imagination," a country where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream. Azar Nafisi is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran "and" Things I've Been Silent About." A passionate advocate of books and reading, she appears regularly on major media, speaks to audiences around the world. Nafisi is a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.
