Azar Nafisi was teaching American literature in Iran at the time of the revolution in 1979. Because she refused to wear the mandated head covering, she was forced to leave the university. She continued to teach her students in her home. She moved to the United States in 1997. In 2003, she published Reading Lolita in Teheran, which was a huge bestseller. She became an American citizen in 2008. Please open the link and read the interview in full. It appeared on the website of American Purpose.

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Azar Nafisi has championed literature as an act of resistance against threats to freedom and imagination. To read dangerously, as Nafisi puts it, is to arouse curiosity and challenge the status quo.

Sahar Soleimany sat down with the critically acclaimed Iranian-American author to talk about the importance of resistance writers at a time of heightened threats to…