conducting the conversation will be yet another great writer, hamid debashi, professor of iranian studies in comparative literature at columbia university here in new york and author of some 20 books including a one-volume iranian history, iran, and most recently the books "iran, the green movement and the usa." .. so productive that despite the fact that his only a decade or so older than me five grown up with his novels. in many ways my intellectual who political mental makeup is a product of the fiction. i've read him since 1980, and as i speak right now, i just turned 60, i am reading his most recent novel of the kernel that as you know has not been published, and i borrowed it from him a couple of nights ago and i said finish it over the night. the novelist so exquisitely powerful, so amazingly powerful that it is impossible to finish it in just one. his significance for us in iran. it's impossible to exaggerate. on many occasions it is like having a national museum come across the ocean on loan to us share in the united states. he is not that well known to the english-speaking world