The Ungrateful Refugee

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 * *