The Republic of Imagination

Playful, sombre and tender, Nafisi’s character-vignettes persuade us that reading nourishes empathy and friendship, opening the forbidden path through the green gate. * Independent *
Resonant and deeply affecting … an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction. * New York Times *
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. * Marjane Satrapi *
A lovely book: sharp in observation and wholly readable. * Larry McMurtry *
An arresting read … striking and utterly persuasive * Times Higher Education *
Nafisi argues passionately * New Statesman *
A moving and convincing case for the necessity of literature * Big Issue in the North *
The book is a triumph … Most of all, I admire Nafisi’s bravery in challenging the commercialisation of America’s cultural and educational life … Nafisi’s sustained critique of trends in the American higher education system has a lot to say to UK readers and academics as well. Overall, the project is clever and poignant and steers clear of preachiness or schmaltz. But perhaps more impressive is the fact that although this is ostensibly a book about reading, Nafisi covers so many different aspects of life: morality, loneliness, coffee shops, technology, suicide, race, gender. In the end, the republic of imagination is not ‘about’ anything: what it comes down to is a single question. How should we live – as a society and as individuals? * New Welsh Review *

Azar Nafisi is a visiting professor and the executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She has taught Western literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University and the University of Allameh Tabatabai in Iran. In 1981 she was expelled from the University of Tehran after refusing to wear the veil. In 1994 she won a teaching fellowship from Oxford University, and in 1997 she and her family left Iran for America. She is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I’ve Been Silent About, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic, and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and two children.

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