Description

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

Publisher Review

An elegant telling of truth to power… published at a poignant moment * Observer * I was hugely moved by this book … Essential reading, an extraordinary labor of love and hope that is destined to become indispensable in the continuing struggle for justice. — John Burnside, author of A LIE ABOUT MY FATHER Instantly gripping… an ambitious and moving exploration of the border we draw around credible victimhood, and will cement Nayeri’s position as a master story teller of the refugee experience * Guardian * Nayeri’s mesmerizing, genre-bending book braids together narratives of asylum seekers, exonerated felons, and religious converts … Heartbreaking and hopeful. Reading this book will upend your preconceptions about who is worthy of belief, as writing it did for Nayeri herself. — Amanda Frost, author of YOU ARE NOT AMERICAN: CITIZENSHIP STRIPPING FROM DRED SCOTT TO THE DREAMERS A compelling, generous, and distinctive inquiry into the nature of belief, credibility, and, above all, the deeply unjust and unequal societies in which we live. — Chitra Ramaswamy, author of HOMELANDS: THE HISTORY OF A FRIENDSHIP