Dina Nayeri

The title of The Ungrateful Refugee is an argument rather than a confession. Nayeri's case is that people granted asylum are quietly billed for it, expected to perform gratitude on demand, and that the demand deserves refusing. She was eight when she left Isfahan in 1988 with her younger brother and their mother, a doctor who had converted to Christianity and been threatened for it. Two years in Dubai and an Italian hostel followed before the family reached Oklahoma. The 2019 book sets that history beside the recent journeys of people from Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, and beside the interview rooms where an official decides whose story sounds true. It took Germany's Geschwister-Scholl-Preis in 2020 and was a Kirkus Prize finalist. Nayeri studied at Princeton, Harvard and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and consulted at McKinsey before she wrote full time. Her novels are A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Refuge.