Friday, Iranian-American author Azar Nafisi joins us to talk about the state of literature and the humanities in the US. Using the great American works Huck Finn,Babbitt, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, she argues the greatest danger to the literary arts is not a totalitarian regime, but the "intellectual indolence" of the public. Nafisi says it matters because literature is more than entertainment; it is a guide to a better society. Her latest book is called The Republic of Imagination. [Rebroadcast]
Azar Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran [Indiebound|Amazon] and The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books [Indiebound|Amazon]. She's a Visiting Professor and the executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
- Huck Finn [Indiebound|Amazon]
- Babbitt [Indiebound|Amazon]
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter [Indiebound|Amazon]
