Azar Nafisi Reads Dangerously

The Book Case

ABC News

Fiction, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.1 • 766 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Azar Nafisi offers you - a reader - a challenge. It is the title of her latest book - “Read Dangerously”. Azar comes with a unique perspective. She was teaching in Iran when the clerics took over, banned books, and eliminated many of the freedoms that Americans often take for granted. She caused something of a sensation when she wrote “Reading Lolita in Tehran” - contending that reading fiction can be a liberating and even subversive act. Now she teaches in the United States and worries that Americans aren’t reading enough - specifically aren’t reading works that take them outside their comfort zone. What freedoms could we lost if we don’t "Read Dangerously"? Her argument is an important one and very much worth a listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.0	Find the most exciting gift for every fan at LiveNation.com slash gifts. That's LiveNation.com
0:28.6	slash gifts. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Back to the bookcase. We hope you're joining us again
0:36.8	and are joining us regularly.
0:38.2	I'm Charlie Gibson.
0:39.1	And I'm Kate Gibson.
0:40.3	Two hosts who seem oddly addicted to saying welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome more than once.
0:44.5	We obsessively welcome you to the bookcase.
0:47.9	Well, we want to make sure, absolutely sure that the point gets across.
0:51.0	We are featuring today a book by Azar Naucasy, A-Z-A-R-N-A-F-I-S-I. She is an Iranian writer,
1:02.8	and she caused something of a sensation a number of years ago when she wrote a book called
1:07.5	Reading Lolita in Tehran, which was about her and about a group of
1:13.9	women that she had reading Lolita, which was a subversive act to do in Iran, given the clerical
1:21.8	takeover there. Now she's written a book, Kate, that I think is different than anything we've
1:26.8	talked about. This book is called Read Dangerously.
1:30.5	She talks in this book, I think, you know, writing, the pen is mightier than the sword.
1:36.6	We've always assumed that writing could be a subversive act.
1:40.4	This book makes the point very eloquently that reading can also be a subversive act.
1:46.8	She quotes Nabokov as saying, curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
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