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’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.

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.

This time, through five long letters, she vibrantly imagines conversations with her father Ahmad.

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.

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.

... [a] stunning look at the power of reading.