Azar Nafisi on The Republic of Imagination: A Preview

Reading Lolita in Tehran author Azar Nafisi’s keynote address on “The Republic of Imagination” on the final day of Winter Institute 10 in Asheville received a standing ovation from booksellers, moved by her message of books’ essential role in society.

Photo credit: Kevin Mann Photography

On Wednesday, the Iranian-born professor and executive director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University, whose latest book is The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books (Viking), quoted the authors Flaubert, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, and Nabokov on the value of books, fiction, and reading.

The bookselling industry is not going away, Nafisi said, because booksellers provide an essential service: Books perpetuate the democratic imagination necessary for a free culture’s survival.

“Bookstores become the real manifestation of what a democratic space is,” said Nafisi, and within that space booksellers are those who incite readers’ curiosity, a force that breeds knowledge, connects readers around the world, and engenders a deep understanding of human dignity that encourages true empathy.

Stay tuned for a full article about Nafisi’s speech in the next issue of Bookselling This Week.