Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.
I blame my generation for having neglected to teach our children that in life there are no safe places, that safety is an illusion. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistlin...
A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic - not that it advocates democr...
America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?
يشجعوننا على إظهار مشاعر حبنا للإمام بأقصى أشكال التعبير مغالاة، بينما يحرّمون علينا أن نظهر أي تعبير علني عن مشاعرنا الشخصية، وأعني الحب بشكل خاص
عجبا! كيف يمكن للحظة انفتاح يتيمة أن تتحول إلى حرية هائلة؟
You yourself told us that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ
When I left class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, a...
This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing.
The feelings I thought I had left behind returned when, almost nineteen years later, the Islamic regime would once again turn against its students. This time it would open fire on those it had admitte...
Look at these magnificent women, I thought, created in such misogynistic and hierarchical societies, yet they are the subversive centers around which the plot is shaped. Everything is supposed to revo...
Later, we all wondered how it was that our concern was not so much for our lives or for the fact that five armed strangers were using our house for a shooting match with a neighbor who was also armed...
It is amazing how everything can fall into a routine
I was reminded of a painter friend who had started her career by depicting scenes from life, mainly deserted rooms, abandoned houses and discarded photographs of women. Gradually, her work became more...
Fiction is an antidote, a reminder of the power of individual choice. Every novel has at its core a choice by at least one of its protagonists, reminding the reader that she can choose to be her own p...
But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with n...
A message was sent by the regime to the faithful: to survive they would have to be loyal to only one interpretation of the faith, and to accept the new political role of the clergy. Father felt that t...
These sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.
When the founding fathers conceived of this new nation, they understood that the education of its citizens would be essential to the health of their democratic enterprise. Knowledge was not just a lux...
It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a...