Immersion and Subversion: Azar Nafisi on the Radical Power of Literature

Iranian–American writer and memoirist Azar Nafisi has built a career around her passion for interpreting literature from alternative and sometimes forbidden perspectives – and her dedication to the idea that narrative can be a liberating, transformative and subversive political and social force.
A decade ago, Reading Lolita in Tehran told Nafisi’s story of how she – secular and living in Iran – taught proscribed Western classics in secret, dodging state censors and arbitrary raids. The book ran to the heights of bestseller lists worldwide and was published in 32 languages.
Her latest, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, picks up the thread of her earlier work and extends an emphatic argument for literature’s crucial place in democratic societies.
Drawing on her experiences in Iran and America, Nafisi will share her thoughts on the necessity of imagination, the economic and political dangers of living in a society that lacks vision, and the utility of the humanities in a time of crisis.
Hosted by Jonathan Green (@GreenJ).
Azar Nafisi is presented in partnership with Sydney Opera House and United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
Featuring
Featuring

Azar Nafisi is currently the director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between cult... Read more

Jonathan Green has been a working journalist since the late 1970s. This makes him both very old and reasonably experienced. After an early degree-ending flirtation with public radio, the bulk of Jonathan’s career has been spent in newspapers, beginning with a cadetship at the Canberra Times and ta... Read more
Watch, Listen, Read

Read
Hot Desk Extract: three approaches to mem*ry
20 Jun 2022

Watch
Reading with Consent
14 Jun 2022

Watch
Teens Talk... Consent
14 Jun 2022

Read
Paul Dalla Rosa on An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life
10 Jun 2022

Read
'Nothing connects humans like fiction'
9 Jun 2022

Read
Giving new life to lost objects
8 Jun 2022