Azar Nafisi, author of the New York Times Number One best Seller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, isn't a big fan of slogans. But she started her lecture at the Chicago Public library on April 28th with a slogan that she feels is an exception: "Book Lovers of the World, Unite!".

In 1979, after having spent 15 years away from her native Iran studying English literature at the University of Oklahoma, Nafisi returned to an Iran she no longer recognized. The outcome of the Iranian Revolution was the replacement of the dictatorship of the Shah with an Islamic regime in which religion was used as an ideology to suppress any movement towards democracy or self expression. Nafisi accepted a position teaching literature at the University of Tehran, and soon discovered that religious ideology would impose upon every aspect of her professional career.

In 1980, after refusing to wear the veil in the classroom, Nafisi was expelled from her teaching position and subsequently pursued a personal dream. She chose a handful of her most dedicated female students and began a secret literature discussion group in her home. In her book Reading Lolita in Tehran, a memoir of her experiences with this group, Nafisi says that she chose books of fiction that would most resonate with these women in the context of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Believing great works of fiction are inherently subversive, she chose authors who transcend political affiliation: Nabokov, Fitzgareld, James, and Austen.

During her lecture in Chicago, Nafisi described a republic she would like to live in, the Republic of Imagination. She asserted that we must not limit ourselves to the realm of political correctness, but rather imagine freely and look to art to bring out the magical aspects of life that we forget exist. According to Nafisi, "No amount of morality or preaching can replace the experience of walking in someone else's shoes". She believes that only this experience, attained through the reading of literature, best develops a sense of compassion in people. By heavily censoring the population's reading choices, the Iranian regime denies their citizens of the ability to use fiction as a way of realizing their dreams... what could be, what should be. A common denunciation of literature used by the theocrats is that the immorality of the books' characters will cause the reader to act in immoral ways. "I don't think that after you read Moby Dick you want to go out whaling," she said. "Or that after reading Old Man and the Sea, you want to go fishing."

Nafisi, commenting on the recent march in Washington for women's rights, observed that what people are fighting for now is the same thing people were fighting for in the 1970's when she was attending college: the personal freedom of choice. This right will have even more meaning, she feels, when people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran also have this right. Nafisi believes that nonviolent dialogue and pressure on the regimes, which does not mean invading a country, is the way to bring rights to the people.