Azar NafisiEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

Audio recording of a lecture given on April 17, 2015 by Azar Nafisi as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.

Today our guest is writer Azar Nafisi. We’ll talk about her new book "Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times."

The jailed Iranian women's rights activist Narges Mohammadi, is this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. On Today's Show: Summer Lopez , chief program officer of Free Expression Programs at PEN America and Azar Nafisi , author of many books including Reading Lolita in Tehran and most recently Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times (Dey Street Books, 2022), discuss Mohammadi's work, and the importance, and difficulties of speaking truth to power.

How can reading a novel become an act of political rebellion? This is one of the important questions we take up with Azar Nafisi, author of the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar’s latest book is Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times . In it, she focuses on the parallels and connections between the totalitarian mindset in Iran and totalitarian tendencies in the United States. Azar notes that tyrants and writers in both countries seek to recreate reality, tyrants by telling us that the truth is what they say it is, and writers by excavating the actual truth. “In Iran, like all totalitarian states,” Azar says, “the regime pays too much attention to poets and writers, harassing, jailing, and even killing them. The problem in America is that too little attention is paid to them.” The solution? “Reading literature and philosophy will teach you to have an independent mindset,” Azar explains. “It teaches you to be generous towards others, to not live on hate. … One of the things that is fascinating to me about fiction is that by structure, it is democratic. … A novel is comprised of different characters from different backgrounds–gender, race, ethnicity, religion. … The plot moves forward through creating tensions within and between these characters. Even the villain, even the bad guy has a voice of his own. So fiction becomes dangerous. These two aspects of it are anti-totalitarian: its democratic structure and its search for truth.” Azar Nafisi is the author of the multi-award-winning New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran , as well as Things I've Been Silent About and The Republic of Imagination . Formerly a fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute, she's taught at Oxford and several universities in Tehran, and she's currently Centennial Fellow at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Azar's writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times , The Washington Post , The New Republic , and The Wall Street Journal . Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast) , or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com . We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more. Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network , a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy . Since you’re listening to Book Dreams, we’d like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enjoy our October “Book Lunch”, as we welcome special guest author and public intellectual Azar Nafisi back to our show to discuss her new book Read Dangerously ! More on this episode from Mitch’s notebook “While I do love to speak freely and spontaneously on a book that has become close to my heart or seems central to our collective lives in a moment or "snapshot" (as I would formulate it), there is simply nothing as powerful and valuable as being able to communicate with the author of the book in question in the moment. This was nowhere more forcefully brought home than being able to have a conversation with Azar Nafisi on her book “Reading Dangerously” . Not only is her book possibly one of the most important in our current moment it is also concerns our universal humanity as she expressed so eloquently during our conversation. This is Azar Nafisi's second visit to our show and I always feel blessed when she is on our show as in a very real sense she represents the spirit of our podcast . As you will hear she certainly knows her literature but many subjects came up into course of our show - issues of literature, philosophy as well as politics. I certainly hope you will celebrate her book with us as it one we will surely enjoy reading long into the future as much as we will now.”

Next time on Access Utah we’ll revisit our conversation from March with writer Azar Nafisi. We’ll talk about her new book “Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times.”

This week’s episode inspires and challenges and encourages all of us to embrace the magic of subversive reading. This conversation with Azar Nafisi, the best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, about her new book, Read Dangerously, is a reminder of what’s at stake for us right now in the US, why we need to engage and not check out, or worse, employ the same tactics as extremists in the fight for democracy. Tune in for an episode that’s political and urgent and necessary—and if you’re not reading dangerously, make the next book on your reading list a subversive one.

This week’s episode inspires and challenges and encourages all of us to embrace the magic of subversive reading. This conversation with Azar Nafisi, the best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran , about her new book, Read Dangerously , is a reminder of what’s at stake for us right now in the US, why we need to engage and not check out, or worse, employ the same tactics as extremists in the fight for democracy. Tune in for an episode that’s political and urgent and necessary—and if you’re not reading dangerously, make the next book on your reading list a subversive one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s episode inspires and challenges and encourages all of us to embrace the magic of subversive reading. This conversation with Azar Nafisi, the best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran , about her new book, Read Dangerously , is a reminder of what’s at stake for us right now in the US, why we need to engage and not check out, or worse, employ the same tactics as extremists in the fight for democracy. Tune in for an episode that’s political and urgent and necessary—and if you’re not reading dangerously, make the next book on your reading list a subversive one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Today our guest is writer Azar Nafisi. We’ll talk about her new book "Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times."

“ I came across the work of Dr. Azar Nafisi at exactly the same time I was undergoing a spiritual transformation regarding the value of the arts and letters. This was the time of the years 2001 and a few years after. At that time I gave no thought at all to the internet (though perhaps I should have!) and podcasts were not yet even an idea (as far as I know) on anybody's mind. But I was giving a lot of thought to the arts in its many forms and books as specific medium were a big part of that. You could say that of all of the episodes thus far this one is the most bookish one. Dr. Azar Nafisi's knowledge and wisdom on literature is unsurpassed. You might say that some of the themes I am pursuing now in this very podcast were present as something like an acorn in those years. I was already primed to enjoy her Reading Lolita In Tehran by the very nature of its subject matter and what I was undergoing personally: in a phrase the value of art and the defense of such value against all those who are insensitive (or worse) to its value. The very style and meaning of her book was what I needed to read the most then and it is a book I have returned to many times since. One of her strengths is her ability to weave politics and aesthetics in the truest way, and moreover, in a way that really communicates with a wide audience. Her decision to teach Nabokov and F Scott Fitzgerald in the Iran of the mid 1990s was, to my mind, one of the most valuable political acts anybody could have done at that time. (Similar in certain respects to Susan Sontag's producing Waiting For Godot in Sarajevo in 1993) . As she makes clear in this episode she regards the medium of the novel itself as "democratic." Yet she is wise enough to know that not everything can or should be always so political. In Reading Lolita there is a most arresting passage in this regard: "It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing." I really enjoyed discussing Henry James and Jane Austen and many others with her. I hope you enjoy hearing her discuss these as well. I hope at a future date she can return and discuss even more, so rich is her knowledge and erudition.” Dr. Azar Nafisi's Biography : Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Earning high acclaim and an enthusiastic readership. Read her full bio here: https://azarnafisi.com/about-azar/ Additional links to Dr. Nafisi's beautiful work here: https://azarnafisi.com/ Twitter @azarnafisi Facebook @azarnafisi

"I wanted to show how close reality and fiction are..."

"..trying to create a reality which had not existed before..."