Khamenei felt that novels gave him insight into the deeper realities
of life in the West. "Read the novels of some authors with leftist tenden
cies, such as Howard Fast," he advised an audience of writers and artists
in 1996. "Read the famous book The Grapes of Wrath, written by John
Steinbeck, . . . and see what it says about the situation of the left and
how the capitalists of the so-called center of democracy treated them."
He is also a fan of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which he recommended in March
2002 to high-level state managers for the light it sheds on U.S. history:
"Isn't this the government that massacred the original native inhabitants
of the land of America? That wiped out the American Indians? Wasn't it
this system and its agents who seized millions of Africans from their
houses and carried them off into slavery and kidnapped their young sons
and daughters to become slaves and inflicted on them for long years the
most severe tragedies? Today, one of the most tragic works of art is
Uncle Tom's Cabin.... This book still lives after almost 200 years."