The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

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Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. Now, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with those of other asylum seekers in recent years. In these pages, women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home, a closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials.

Surprising and provocative, The Ungrateful Refugee offers a new, complete narrative of resettlement, and re-calibrates the conversation around the refugee experience. But above all here are the real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, to journey in hope of a better, safer life, and, for the lucky few, the struggle to start afresh in a new culture.

Reviews

Dina Nayeri has written a vital book for our times. The Ungrateful Refugee gives voice to those whose stories are too often lost or suppressed. Braiding memoir, reportage and essayism, Nayeri allows those fortunate enough to have never been stateless or displaced to glimpse something of the hardships and subtleties of the refugee experience. Written with compassion, tenderness and a burning anger, her book appears at the end of a decade in which division and dislocation have risen to a terrible pitch. It speaks powerfully from - and to - the heart. Please read it -- ROBERT MACFARLANE
A work of astonishing, insistent importance . . . This is a book full of revelatory truths, moments where we are plunged deeply and painfully into the quotidian experience of the refugee * * Observer * *
This is a humane and compelling book that seeks to make human those demonised by the media and governing bodies for so long. Nayeri is never sentimental and her accounts of refugee lives, including her own, are unflinching, complex, provocative and important -- NIKESH SHUKLA
Dina Nayeri's powerful writing confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience -- VIET THANH NGUYEN
A thoughtful investigation . . . This wide-ranging, reasoned book is no polemic: its observations are self-reflective, contemplative and significant * * Financial Times * *
Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence * * New York Times * *
A remarkable book, whose evocative stories are deftly woven into a powerful tapestry, with lessons for us all. Anybody interested in the refugee experience will learn from Dina Nayeri's book. As for policymakers: The Ungrateful Refugee should be compulsory reading if they are to regain or retain a sense of humanity -- STEVE CRAWSHAW, Policy Director, Freedom from Torture, former London Director of Human Rights Watch
Cogent and persuasive . . . provoking and enlightening * * Bookmunch * *
With her own experience to guide her, she talks to present-day refugees in camps in Greece, weaving her own story into the tales of hardship she hears . . . Nayeri presents their stories sensitively and respectfully * * Herald * *

Author Bio

Dina Nayeri was born in Iran during the revolution and arrived in America when she was ten years old. She is the winner of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize. The author of two novels - Refuge and A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea - and contributor to The Displaced, her work has been published in over twenty countries. Her stories and essays have been published in The O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, the New York Times, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Granta and many other publications. She lives in London. @DinaNayeri | dinanayeri.com