Description
Book SynopsisThe prizewinning author of The Ungrateful Refugee asks who is believed in our society, who is not - and why?
'An ambitious and moving exploration of the borders we draw around credible victimhood that 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
Trade ReviewAn elegant telling of truth to power... published at a poignant moment * Observer *
An
important, courageous, brilliant book; an interrogation of "disbelief culture" and the injustice that both fuels it and is fuelled by it, a form-shifting memoir of an already-remarkable life, and a
moving, harrowing investigation of love, loss and care. -- Robert Macfarlane, author of UNDERLAND
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
A
profound, gorgeous, devastating book,
exhilarating in both its compassion and its contemplation of pain ...
Who Gets Believed? is that
rarest of creations, an original work about a condition in which we are all implicated. -- Jeff Sharlet, bestselling author of THE FAMILY and THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS
A
truly remarkable book, where universal and deeply personal themes are
powerfully interwoven ... A
masterclass in storytelling, teasing out the crucial implications of 'who gets believed' for all of us. -- Steve Crawshaw, policy director at Freedom from Torture and author of STREET SPIRIT: THE POWER OF PROTEST AND MISCHIEF
