Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

I'm KCRW, Santa Monica.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm very pleased to have as my guest, Azar Na Fisi,

and it's the occasion of her new memoir or book of memories, things I've been silent about.

She's the author, most of you will know, of reading Lolita in Tehran,

which was really a magnificent book for me because, well, many of us have found it difficult to reframe the arguments for why we read, for why culture is valuable.

And they're so deep died in our nature that you lose the words for the value.

The value has always been assumed, given.

And so when you read a book like this in which literature is put into the frame of life

in post-revolution Iran and needs to be defended, not just against authority, but explain to readers

why are we reading these books in which

adultery, in which all kinds of dark events are taking place? What is it that literature

is? Now in this new book, things I've been silent about, you're doing the opposite. These are people who,

in life, have dealt with adultery, with lies. We're experiencing these characters modified

by your memory, but unmodified by the transforming powers of fiction.

What was it like to strip your parents down of the stories that you've told about them,

of the things that you know, and tell the truth about them.

...