The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the
power of literature in turbulent times arming readers with a resistance reading list ranging
from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood. [A] stunning look at the power of
reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn. ?Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Remarkable. ... Audacious. ?The Progressive Stunningly beautiful and perceptive. ?Los Angeles
Review of Books What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages
continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our
daily lives and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature
through its free exchange affect politics? In this galvanizing guide to literature as
resistance Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and
voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran her life as an immigrant in the United
States and her role as literature professor in both countries she crafts an argument for why
in a genuine democracy we must engage with the enemy and how literature can be a vehicle for
doing so. Structured as a series of letters to her father who taught her as a child about how
literature can rescue us in times of trauma Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our
time through the works of Toni Morrison Salman Rushdie James Baldwin Margaret Atwood and
more.
