ONLINE: Azar Nafisi

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Yousef Al-Abdullah

Azar Nafisi

Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi examines the impact of reading in her new book, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. Nafisi, who also wrote 2003’s award-winning New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, approached her latest work by asking questions about the role of literature in an era rife with political strife. The book is structured as a series of letters to Nafisi’s father, who taught her as a child that literature can provide solace in times of trauma. All attendees will receive a copy of Read Dangerously at this free Wisconsin Book Festival talk. Note: This event is changing from in-person to a Crowdcast livestream; RSVP here.

media release: What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?

In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so. Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more.