Azar Nafisi, 58, is an Iranian writer and professor of English literature. She lives in Washington DC and became an American citizen in 2008. In 1995 she quit her job as a university lecturer in Tehran and taught a small group of students at home, discussing works considered controversial in Iran at the time, such as Lolita and Madame Bovary. Her 2003 book based on this experience, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 117 weeks and won a string of literary awards. Nafisi’s latest non-fiction book, The Republic of Imagination (Viking), is described as “a passionate tribute to literature’s place in a free and enlightened society”.
Were you surprised by the success of Reading Lolita in Tehran?
I thought if it sold 9,000 copies that would be great. [It sold more than 1.5m.] Even friends and colleagues discouraged me: “People are focused on [the US invasion of] Iraq and you are writing about these dead writers that no one cares about?” But you write because you want to write. I wanted to talk about a time when I found myself voiceless and I found my voice and my connection to people through books.
Why did you leave Iran?
It wasn’t a decision taken in haste. There reached a point where I couldn’t do what I did for a living. I realised that whatever I wrote would have to come out in a mutilated form. That was one of the final blows. I felt that if I came here [to the US] I could connect to my own people in a way that I could not in Iran.
What motivated the latest book?
In the last chapter of Reading Lolita in Tehran I talk about how my students were uncritically in love with this world they could not connect to physically – the west. I wanted them to know that this was an illusion. That there were serious critiques of any system, no matter how wonderful. When I came here [to the US], I realised how the ideal of freedom is being eroded. One canary in the mine is the denigration of ideas.
What do you mean by this? What are the signs?
The inequalities of the education system [in the US]. You are also experiencing this in Britain. Where public schools [ie state schools] are virtually being dismantled. Where children are deprived of music, art and fiction more and more. And where all the privilege goes to the private schools. This is not the America I want my children to grow up in.
Why is fiction in particular important in solving all this?
The importance of ideas and the imagination is that they really defy borders and limitations. Books are representative of the most democratic way of living. There’s a James Baldwin quote about feeling all alone and isolated until you read Dostoevsky and you discover that someone who lived a hundred years ago connects to you – and you don’t feel lonely any more.
The premise of this book is that “to deny literature is to deny pain and the dilemma that is called life”. In what way can fiction help us with this dilemma?
Fiction confronts a great many things that we cannot fully confront in real life. Fiction is the ability to be multi-vocal and to speak through the mind and the heart of even the villain. In doing that, it forces us to face the pain of being human and being transient. It’s what Nabokov talks about: “The conclusive evidence of having lived.”
Who are your favourite contemporary writers?
Alice Munro. Muriel Spark. Some of Margaret Atwood. Julian Barnes, especially Flaubert’s Parrot. Some Ian McEwan. Bellow’s Herzog.
Do you read anything that isn’t “great literature”?
I love thrillers. My father and I shared this love when I was very young. I started with Agatha Christie. Right now I’m discovering that Scotland has Ian Rankin. I’ve read most of his. And Val McDermid. I also love to watch Inspector Morse.
You write: “The true lure of a great book is not that sugar-coated candy house offered by a witch but the mysterious whisper that beckons.” Does the noise of digital technology and social media make it more difficult to hear that whisper?
Yes. Technology is changing our lives so fast. Ebooks should not disappear – we need efficiency and comfort. But they should complement real books. The book as an object evokes all of these sensual, human experiences. I don’t want to live in a virtual reality. I like the touch and smell of things and the feel of the sun on my hair.
The Republic of Imagination is published by Viking (£18.99). Click here to buy it for £15
