'I knew this from the beginning, when I was inside the lorry, thinking about truth. If you are a good storyteller you will be trusted, get a life, and escape from hell. But what do you need to do to be trusted, if telling the truth is not enough?' - Aso, a refugee working with Freedom from Torture Aso is one of many powerful voices in Dina Nayeri's wide-ranging, groundbreaking new book, which combines deep reportage with her own life experience to examine what constitutes believability. 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. '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

'A vital book for our times' ROBERT MACFARLANE 'Unflinching, complex, provocative' NIKESH SHUKLA 'A work of astonishing, insistent importance' Observer 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 recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience. Here are the real human stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.

Seventy years after the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UK is guilty of undermining the very principles of asylum, inhumanely detaining those seeking protection and ushering in sweeping changes that threaten to punish refugees at every turn. But the UK’s immigration system is not alone in committing such breaches of human rights. The fourth volume of Refugee Tales explores our present international environment, combining author re-tellings with first-hand accounts of individuals who have been detained across the world. As the coronavirus pandemic defies borders – leaving those who are detained even more vulnerable – this collection shares stories spanning Canada, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and the UK, and calls for international insistence on a future without detention. Featuring a prologue by Baroness Shami Chakrabarti. The fourth volume in the Refugee Tales series, proceeds from the sales of which go to two refugee charities.

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.

Growing up in a small fishing village in 1980s Iran, 11-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are fascinated by America. They keep lists of English vocabulary words and collect contraband copies of Life magazine and Bob Dylan cassettes. So when Saba suddenly finds herself abandoned, alone with her father in Iran, she is certain that her mother and twin have moved to America without her. Bereft, she aches for her lost mother and sister, and for the Western life she believes she is being denied. All her life Saba has been taught that 'fate is in the blood,' which must mean that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. Thus, as time passes and Saba falls in and out of love and struggles with the limited possibilities available to her as a woman in Iran, she imagines a simultaneous, parallel life - a Western version, for her sister. But where Saba's story has all the grit and brutality of real life in post-revolutionary Iran, her sister's life - as Saba envisions it - gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of. Filled with a colourful cast of characters, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is told in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with straightforward Western prose to form a wholly original story about the importance of controlling your own fate.