Thursday, 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 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]
