The Republic of Imagination

From the author of the bestselling memoirReading Lolita in Tehrancomes a powerful and passionate case for the vital role of fiction today. 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 taughtThe Great Gatsbyand 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.

Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her at a reading, she energetically responds to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favourite novels, 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 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 ofReading Lolita in TehranandThings Ive Been Silent About, and has written for theNew York Times, theWashington Post, theWall Street Journaland theNew Republic,and has appeared on countless radio and television programs. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and two children.

www.azarnafisi.com