Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, is creating a global online book club.

"People think of activism in terms of going to the White House or becoming political every four years, but I think activism is also very actively and consciously supporting a culture of thought and imagination," says Nafisi, who is speaking in Toronto tonight.

"I keep thinking that our slogan is going to be 'Readers of the World Unite!' "

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For Nafisi, the struggle for freedom, in both the East and the West, always circles back to the illumination of literature. I'm really hopeful about reading and books," she says. "Literature is the most potent weapon against political stagnation.

"Great literature by nature is subversive because it always exposes or reveals what is behind the reality we are looking at; it always creates potential for how reality could, or should be."