Nafisi’s dispatches are eloquent essays on literature’s power to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In addressing them to one she loves dearly, she provides a built-in layer of warmth and understanding. But she still hits hard ... Nafisi gets to the heart of the matter in the very first chapter ... You could say Nafisi is prescient, but the themes she’s tackling are timeless, older even than Plato’s The Republic, which she also addresses.

Nafisi’s father went to prison for four years because he insisted on fair and humane treatment for people he disagreed with. From father to daughter, there is a clear line in the moral and intellectual commitment to seeing the enemy’s humanity. Read Dangerously — criticism, memoir and argument as well as correspondence to a lost loved one — confirms that lineage ... Frequently and deftly shifting lanes between autobiography and literary analysis, she uses her experience and reading of three books to question the nature of this immemorial conflict between the poet and the tyrant ... Pushing beyond state power, she also asks incisive questions about the intolerance within individuals. Her observations implicate both adherents of Make America Great Again and their political foes ... This book reciprocates the rhetorical gesture in a natural, intimate voice. Stylistic and affective reasons aside, writing to her departed father reinforces the mood of Nafisi’s book, which turns to the power and example of the brave past and to a tradition of great books as solace and guide. With sensitivity and intelligence, it offers a new canon for the tyrannies of the present and the dystopian possibilities of the future.

Reading Dangerously is a political writer’s brilliant attempt to understand historical and political events, as well as human nature, such that one feels her struggle to offer honest, well considered suppositions. Her carefully chosen words and her attempt to articulate cogent analyses ultimately lead readers to deeper understanding of the importance of literature as an act of resistance ... 'Great works of fiction are about revealing the truth, [and] great writers . . . become witnesses to the truth; they do not, cannot, remain silent.' These words perfectly describe Azar Nafisi’s passion for truth and her mission as a writer. They also bear witness to her many gifts as a critical thinker and a gifted literary figure.

This time, through five long letters, she vibrantly imagines conversations with her father Ahmad ... Nafisi engages in an emotionally intimate correspondence grounded in a close reading of literature that wrestles with tyranny; seeking comfort in stories, the talismans she has always considered her 'portable home' ... Great books, as Nafisi rightly claims, 'reflect and transcend the prejudices of the author as well as their time and place.' Count this one among them.

This is not an immediately apparent grouping to most readers, but her thoughtful and insightful analysis of how these books spoke to her will leave many readers nodding in agreement ... Not all the writers are as well known as Plato, Morrison, Rushdie, and Hurston...Her assessment of these works feels even more heartfelt than the other letters.

Unfortunately, Nafisi’s decision to structure each chapter as a letter to her father is unsuccessful. She repeatedly addresses her beloved Baba, dead for more than a decade, in ways that are distracting and feel false...The device becomes more and more annoying as the book goes along ... She also tells us every time she refills her coffee cup, perhaps to lend her prose the chatty feel of a casual letter about books rather than a formal literary analysis. But the effort falls short; her repetition steals the reader’s attention from the actual ideas about which she writes ... would have been far more successful if Nafisi talked not to but about her father, a choice that would’ve allowed her to reflect more comfortably on his commitment to justice and resistance, as well as his love of literature and learning, both of which inspired her so deeply. In this sense, at least, the book is indeed a beautiful love letter to her father, the man who taught the author to read dangerously and to respond to the troubled world with an abiding sense of connection and hope.

... [a] stunning look at the power of reading ... Nafisi’s prose is razor-sharp, and her analysis lands on a hopeful note ... This excellent collection provokes and inspires at every turn.