The Republic Of Imagination: America In Three Books

"Sure, you’re just looking for a book to read while you’re waiting for dinner to cook — but here’s a brief reminder courtesy of Iranian-American author Azar Nafisi: Reading fiction is an act of bravery, citizenship and imagination. The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books feels like a sort of companion to Nafisi’s best-selling memoir,* Reading Lolita In Tehran,* about teaching literature in post-revolutionary Iran. That book illuminated the importance of literature in a theocracy. This one is an impassioned call to reading in a democracy. Using Mark Twain’s * The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,* Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt and Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Nafisi argues that Americans, so gifted and lucky to live in a democracy, have begun to take reading for granted and marginalize the books that made us great. Not as long as she’s around — Nafisi has a gift for making literary criticism fun; reading the book is like auditing the class of the most passionate professor in the department."