From the author of Refuge, a magical novel about a young Iranian woman lifted from grief by her powerful imagination and love of Western culture. Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba’s world has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister’s experience gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of. Filled with a colorful cast of characters and presented in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with modern Western prose, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a tale about memory and the importance of controlling one’s own fate.
If you loved A Thousand Splendid Suns, you'll sink into this spellbinding
story of an Iranian girl who, separated from her mother and twin sister during
the turmoil following the revolution, invents a rich, imaginative world in
which they live on.
An unflinching look at ten young lives suspended outside of time--and bravely proceeding anyway--inside the Katsikas refugee camp in Greece.Every war, famine, and flood spits out survivors.The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cites an unprecedented 71 million forcibly displaced people on the planet today. In 2018, Dina Nayeri--a former refugee herself and the daughter of a refugee--invited documentary photographer Anna Bosch Miralpeix to accompany her to Katsikas, a refugee camp outside Ioannina, Greece, to record the hopes and struggles of ten of them--siblings and friends from Iran and Afghanistan. "I wanted to play with them, to enter their imagined worlds, to see the landscape inside their minds," she says. Ranging in age from five to seventeen, the children live in partitioned shipping-crate homes crowded on a field below a mountain. Robbed of curiosity and purpose, dignity and identity, each battles the dreary monster of a paused life.Ten lyrical passages lead one into the next, punctuated by intimate photographs, to reveal the dreams, ambitions, and personalities of each displaced child, followed by a powerful account of the author's own experiences in a camp. Locking the global refugee crisis sharply in focus, The Waiting Place is, finally, an urgent call to change what we teach young people about the nature of home and safety.
[Nayeri's] exploration of the exile's predicament is tender and urgent. -The
New Yorker Rich and colorful... [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly
associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere. -New York
Times Crystalline, vivid, moving, and without pretensions, Nayeri's writing is
fluid and spare...Refuge is a timely novel, about a theme that touches and
moves so many, no matter where you are from. -Los Angeles Review of Books [An]
urgent, resonating contemporary story, highlighting today's scattered,
displaced, lost, all-forced-to-be refugees in search of the titular refuge...
Nayeri carefully illuminates the plight of the ever-searching, never-belonging
global wanderer. -The Christian Science Monitor As the daughter of an
immigrant father, the cultural divides that can exist within families is
always on my mind. I love stories that explore questions of home, a central
theme of Refuge. How do we relate to the homes of our parents, especially if
they aren't ours? How do we build homes when we haven't left the old ones
freely? -Elle Dina Nayeri focuses on the relationship between an Iranian
father and daughter as they explore the experience of exile from different
sides of the world and there is so much beauty and pain expressed in her
prose... I'll be recommending it to everyone I know. It's stunning. -Buzzfeed
The immigrant experience is at the heart of Dina Nayeri's powerful novel of a
family split by circumstances. -Minneapolis Star-Tribune A lush, brimming
novel of exile. -Newsday Topical and urgent. -W Magazine A nuanced look at
what it means to seek refuge; novels don't get more timely than this. -The
Millions Dina Nayeri's Refuge is a searing and moving meditation on the
migrant experience...Against the ebb and flow of their separations and
reconciliations, Nayeri charts the desperate journeys and the hopes and fates
of other refugees of different nationalities seeking sanctuary in Europe. A
timely read and a compelling one. -Malcolm Forbes for The National Refuge
should be required summer reading in 2017... a beautiful and poignant portrait
of the many different experiences of the displaced. A timely and necessary
work... a vital read for anyone trying to understand what it means to lose and
look for home. -Bustle Nayeri, who was an Iranian refugee herself, has written
a novel that explores the current worldwide refugee crisis through the lens of
a father-daughter relationship. -Brightly Niloo's story, and her complex
relationship with her father, expose a narrative of immigration that is
necessary and nuanced. -Read It Forward A poignant reflection on the plight of
refugees... Nayeri uses gentle humor and evocative prose to illuminate the
power of familial bonds and to bestow individuality on those anonymous people
caught between love of country and need for refuge. A beautiful addition to
the burgeoning literature of exile. -Library Journal (starred review) Richly
imagined and frequently moving... [manages] various threads-the personal, the
political, the cultural, the generational-deftly, and the result is poignant,
wise, and often funny...a vital, timely novel about what it means to seek
refuge. -Kirkus Set against landscapes of political unrest, Nayeri's novel of
a daughter and father seeking to reconcile their long-distance perceptions of
family offers a captivating, multilayered exploration of lives caught between
worlds. -Booklist A heart-splicing portrayal of the current refugee
crisis...These are people who, seeking asylum, arrive in countries that aren't
their own but must be made inhabitable, if not home. -The Riveter A nuanced
and remarkably textured narrative about a world few of us experience.
-BookPage Nayeri's prose sings while moving nimbly with equal parts
seriousness and humor. -Publishers Weekly Beautifully elegiac, Refuge brings
into focus the entire experience of emigrat
The prizewinning author of The Ungrateful Refugee asks who is believed in our society, who is not - and why? 'Ambitious and moving... it will cement Nayeri's position as a master storyteller of the refugee experience' Guardian Dina Nayeri's wide-ranging, groundbreaking new book combines deep reportage with her own life experience to examine what constitutes believability in our society. Intent on exploring ideas of persuasion and performance, Nayeri takes us behind the scenes in emergency rooms, corporate boardrooms, asylum interviews and into her own family, to ask - where lies the difference between being believed and being dismissed? What does this mean for our culture? As personal as it is profound in its reflections on language, history, morality and compassion, Who Gets Believed? investigates the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another. 'An important, courageous, brilliant book' Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland 'Dina Nayeri asks an incredibly important question, and the answers she finds are crucial for all of us' Oliver Bullough, bestselling author of Butler to the World 'I was hugely moved by this book. Who Gets Believed? is essential reading, an extraordinary labour of love and hope that is destined to become indispensable in the continuing struggle for justice' John Burnside, winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2023
An ancient Egyptian spell transforms the Marlowe School into a dark underworld, drawing sixteen-year-old Wendy and her brother John into a perilous adventure. Their discovery of THE BOOK OF GATES leads them to unleash sinister forces lurking beneath Manhattan. As the school becomes increasingly haunted, a charming new R.A. named Peter reveals the dire consequences of their actions. This sequel reimagines Peter Pan, blending themes of immortality with a gripping, atmospheric fantasy that explores the dangers of curiosity and power.
Years after vanishing, five teens reappear with a strange governess, and when they enter New York City's most prestigious high school, they soar to suspicious heights with the help of their benefactor's extraordinary "gifts."
Ob einem geglaubt wird oder nicht, entscheidet die Gesellschaft anhand unausgesprochener Regeln und Verhaltensweisen. Aber was, wenn Glaubwürdigkeit im Grunde ein Privileg ist, das nur Eingeweihten vorbehalten ist, die von Geburt an die entsprechenden sozialen Codes kennen und verwenden? Was bedeutet das für diejenigen, denen nicht geglaubt wird? Diesen Fragen geht Dina Nayeri in ihrem neuen Buch nach, das Reportage, Essay, Memoir und philosophische Betrachtung zugleich ist. Sie nimmt uns mit in Verhörräume und Gerichtssäle, in die Geschäftsetagen der Hochfinanz, in die Klassenzimmer ihrer Schulzeit und in ihre eigene Familie, um zu zeigen, wie sehr wir alle davon abhängig sind, dass die anderen uns Glauben und Vertrauen schenken.
