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Sebastian Ritscher
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THE REPUBLIC OF IMAGINATION

Azar Nafisi

America in Three Books

You certainly remeber Azar Nafisi’s blockbuster READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN and then her memoir THINGS I’VE BEEN SILENT ABOUT. Azar’s new book, REPUBLIC OF IMAGINATION, will revisit many of the themes of LOLITA – it champions the vital importance of literature to a democratic society.
Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her million-copy bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating follow-up, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling, and utterly 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 challenges those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her three favorite American novels—Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt, and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—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 author of Things I’ve Been Silent About and Reading Lolita in Tehran (Random House), the award-winning, critically acclaimed, million-plus copy New York Times bestseller. She lectures and writes extensively on the political implications of literature and culture.
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Book

Published 2014-10-07 by Viking

Book

Published 2014-10-07 by Viking

Comments

Azar Nafisi gave a fantastic interview on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. part 1: http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/author-azar-nafisi-interview-part-1/2819356 part 2: http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/author-azar-nafisi-interview-part-2/2819357

Azar Nafisi, Author of THE REPUBLIC OF IMAGINATION, Interviewed by Laura Jenkins on October 21, 2014 Read more...

We are all citizens of Azar Nafisi’s The Republic of Imagination. Without imagination there are no dreams, without dreams there is no art, and without art there is nothing. Her words are essential.

What does Huck Finn have to do with the Iranian revolution? Azar Nafisi makes a strong case for the answer “everything” and also with democracy in America. Read more...

Arabic rights to Al Kamel British rights to Heinemann/Random House UK Chinese (simplified) rights to Shanghai Sanhui Culture French rights to Lattes Italian rights to Adelphi

A passionate argument for returning to key American novels in order to foster creativity and engagement…Literature, writes Nafisi, is deliciously subversive because it fires the imagination and challenges the status quo…Her literary exegesis lightly moves through her own experiences as a student, teacher, friend and new citizen. Touching on myriad literary examples, from L. Frank Baum to James Baldwin, her work is both poignant and informative. Read more...

Nafisi is a master essayist who sinuously weaves together elements of memoir, criticism, biography and history; you don’t realize how completely these topics interpenetrate each other until you come to the end of a chapter or section, often (at least in my case) with eyes stung by tears. No one writes better or more stirringly about the way books shape a reader’s identity, and about the way that talking books with good friends becomes integral to how we understand the books, our friends and ourselves.

A priceless gift to readers who revel in literary fiction. Read more...

A lovely book: sharp in observation and wholly readable.

The Iranian author talks about the struggle for freedom in Iran and the west – and her distrust of the virtual life. Read more...

Republic is a disarming and provocative defense of the grand themes of literature, particularly as they are found in three very American novels. It's designed as a tonic and inspiration for those concerned about the cultural drift away from literature in particular, and a broad education in the humanities in general, in the age of the Tweet, the YouTube video and the Reddit meme…a blend of memoir and polemic sure to arouse the inner English prof in most readers.

Nafisi’s argument is compelling, but more than that, her pleasure in these works is contagious. If you haven’t read them recently — or ever — you will find yourself picking them up and commencing, and perhaps when you finish…you will have engaged in just the sort of literary quest that she believes is essential for informed citizenship. Read more...

Azar Nafisi first reinvigorated our understanding of why fiction matters in the surprise best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, a bracing chronicle of the risks she took to meet secretly with a group of women students to read and discuss Western novels forbidden in the Islamic Republic of Iran…In The Republic of Imagination, the mirror-image of her first book, she explores the influence fiction has had on life in America, where literature, while not outlawed, is endangered. Read more...

Nafisi presents a passionate and compelling case for the return of the imagination to our nation’s esteem. At a time when the liberal arts are increasingly devalued…Nafisi sounds this warning: A society that dismisses its literature is a society that risks losing its freedom…Leave it to a former citizen of a totalitarian state to slap us upside the head and point out what our literature can teach us…As a teacher, she often hears the question posed to all English teachers: Why do we have to read this? This book is a thoughtful and brilliant answer to that question. Read more...

Do novels still matter in a world where real-life stories are so dramatic? Azar Nafisi’s captivating The Republic of Imagination answers this question with a resounding yes. Animated by an electrifying intelligence and a generosity that is nothing short of uplifting, this blend of memoir, biography, and a deep reading of three quintessentially American literary texts makes a successful case for the importance of fiction….Nafisi’s prose is breezy and conversational. The reading experience is like having coffee with your favorite brilliant professor, hanging on her every word about a beloved book…It is indifference that Nafisi argues against, concluding that in novels we find freedom of the imagination, over which no single person will ever have control. The message couldn’t be more relevant in this chapter of our country’s story. Read more...