Azar Nafisi on the importance of reading literature
ListenGuest: Azar Nafisi
In her new book, The Republic of Imagination, Azar Nafisi, explores the role of literature in changing people’s lives and perpetuating the values on which America was founded. Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, dives deep into her three favorite novels — The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Babbit — to make her case. Along the way she looks back at her own childhood in Iran, tells a devastating story about an Iranian American friend, and urges educators to return to teaching humanities as a way to enrich education in the U.S.
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