num_pages: 352
description: A passionate hymn to the power of fiction to transform peoples lives by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran 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 taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating followup 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. What Reading Lolita in Tehran was for Iran The Republic of Imagination is for America. Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle where a skeptical reader told her that Americans dont care about books the way they did back in Iran she challenges those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite American novelsfrom Huckleberry Finn to The Heart Is a Lonely Huntershe 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.
language: English
title: The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
publisher: The Viking Press