In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” - Star–Tribune (Minneapolis)Īged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own.

Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating. “Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’. “Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” - The New York Times Book Review A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction

The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri