National Book Critics Circle Finalist
Washington Independent Review of Books, A Best Book of the Year
Time, A Best Book of March
A NPR Book of the Day
Named a Most Anticipated Book by Goodreads, Literary Hub, Independent Book Review, Her Campus, and more
One of Electric Literature's Books by Women of Color to Read This Year
"Instantly gripping . . . It’s hard to categorize Who Gets Believed?; it is part memoir, part reportage, part criticism . . . But rather than dropping in familiar quotes to underline a specific point, she engages deeply with the texts, alongside other forms of art, to provide refreshing insights that drive the narrative forward . . . the book remains an ambitious and moving exploration of the borders we draw around credible victimhood, and will cement Nayeri’s position as a master storyteller of the refugee experience." —Aamna Mohdin, The Guardian
"Ardent, harrowing . . . An elegant telling of truth to power." —Stuart Jeffries, The Observer
"Memoir, philosophy, and social history collide in this compelling examination . . . [A] powerful, clarifying book." —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"This engrossing book ultimately makes the case for empathy across a range of situations, and for thinking critically about who does and doesn’t get believed, especially about their own stories." —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland
"A groundbreaking book about persuasion and performance that asks unsettling questions about lies, truths, and the difference between being believed and being dismissed in situations spanning asylum interviews, emergency rooms, consulting jobs, and family life. Nayeri explores an aspect of our society that is rarely held up to the light. The book is as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, human psychology, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another." —Arab News
"With every passing day, Nayeri’s book is an increasingly profound and medicinal shock to the system; a defoliant for the chronic, malignant self-deception that has crept like kudzu across the blighted landscape of Western liberal democracy." —David Gottlieb, Another Chicago Magazine
"Always engaging and informative, the book is another milestone in the career of a thinker and writer whom we will undoubtedly be hearing from for many years to come." —Scott Burton, Los Angeles Review of Books
"It becomes clear within the first few chapters that the author is a fine storyteller with accounts that enlighten, entertain, and clearly elucidate her thesis . . . It is a must read for anyone wishing to have an unbiased view of a crucial part of our society and wishing to see reality as it is, not as we hope it is." —Christopher M. Doran, New York Journal of Books
"Perhaps it’s this razor-sharp understanding of the reality that plausibility often hinges on performance that makes Nayeri the perfect guide on her book’s exploration of truth and believability . . . [I]t’s a juggernaut of a work that forces readers to rethink on whom we bestow credibility, and why. It’s an important book, and the best thing may be to shelve a copy in every section of the store." —Gretchen Lida, Washington Independent Review of Books
"Who Gets Believed? is a testament to the power of words and their ability to decide the fate of a life, or many lives. For anyone who stands trial, has been falsely convicted, has gained or been denied asylum, the judge and/or jury are arbiters of destiny — at least on earthly planes of existence." —Mischa Geracoulis, The Markaz Review
"Few books are as erudite, comprehensive, and intensely personal all at once. This is a riveting read that will be of interest to many, from those concerned with the plight of refugees and the biases built into many American institutions to anyone who loves unconventional memoirs and beautiful writing." —Library Journal
"Wide-ranging and provocative." —Publishers Weekly
"Nayeri dances smoothly between memoir and the stories of others . . . An unflinching, compelling look at how 'calcified hearts believe'—and disbelieve." —Kirkus Reviews
“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. Reading it I was reminded of Joan Didion’s famous and oft-misconstrued observation that ‘we tell ourselves stories in order to live’. Who Gets Believed? shows the workings of Nayeri's singular and noble mind." —Chitra Ramaswamy, author of Homelands: The History of a Friendship
"Dina Nayeri’s mesmerizing, genre-bending book braids together narratives of asylum seekers, exonerated felons, and religious converts to ask: Who Gets Believed? In an era of 'fake news' and tribalism, her question is urgent. In lyrical prose, Nayeri dives into court cases, draws from history and literature, and shares her own family’s journey as refugees from Iran. The result is both 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 You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers
"Who Gets Believed? is 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
"A profound, gorgeous, devastating book, exhilarating in both its compassion and its contemplation of pain. Part memoir, part—everything: reportage, criticism, history, meditation—this is a book about the many translations of grief, suffering, and hope. It is also about performance and truth, staged necessarily and most urgently by refugees seeking asylum, and seeking the belief of others. 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
“I was hugely moved by this book . . . To bear witness, to tell my own story in my own words, is a basic human right. And yet as Dina Nayeri’s powerful, often harrowing, but ultimately inspiring account of injustice and survival shows, millions are denied that right on an almost casual basis. Who Gets Believed? is essential reading, an extraordinary labor of love and hope that is destined to become indispensable in the continuing struggle for justice, a day when everyone has the basic right to speak the truth openly and to have their testimony heard." —John Burnside, author of A Lie about My Father
“A truly remarkable book, where universal and deeply personal themes are powerfully interwoven. Torture survivors and other refugees know all too well the cost of being disbelieved about their own life story. Dina Nayeri’s book is itself 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
01/09/2023
Journalist and novelist Nayeri (The Ungrateful Refugee) argues in this wide-ranging and provocative study that believability is often a matter of “performance,” and that “disbelief is the baseline” in British and American immigration courts. Weaving stories of asylum seekers, prisoners, faith-seekers, and medical patients with her own experiences as a refugee, Nayeri examines intriguing issues around the question of truth. One of the strongest stories in the book is that of the brutal torture of a Sri Lankan political prisoner, his subsequent escape to the U.K., and his struggles to convince refugee agents that his scars were evidence of torture and that he should be granted asylum. The Home Office refused to believe him, Nayeri argues, because caseworkers are prone to doubt asylum seekers. Elsewhere, she describes the disbelief and dismissal of prisoners and the poor who come to emergency rooms for medical treatment, and recounts her experiences as a child refugee from Iran and evangelical Christian in Oklahoma, and reflects on her own unwillingness to accept that her brother-in-law struggled with mental illness. Though the discussions about the mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees are insightful, abrupt changes of subject somewhat undermine the force of Nayeri’s arguments. The result is an incisive yet scattered investigation into the nature of doubt. (Mar.)
02/01/2023
This genre-defying book investigates the basic foundations of a good story, demonstrating how people's lives are not only defined but also decided by the stories they tell. Beginning with the question of what makes something believable, former refugee Nayeri (The Ungrateful Refugee) leads readers through a series of narratives that reveal the fraught relationship between truth and believability, and she shows the premium people place on belief. This book combines deep research into the arcane workings of the asylum process with personal observations about religion, literature, cinema, and family life. Nayeri draws on interrogation videos and transcripts, thousands of pages of legal filings, numerous interviews, conversations, and her personal life to bring believability into view, but her greatest achievement is in filtering everything through her distinct voice, articulating her doubts, worries, compassion, anger, frustrations, and loves with bracing honesty. Few books are as erudite, comprehensive, and intensely personal all at once. VERDICT This is a riveting read that will be of interest to many, from those concerned with the plight of refugees and the biases built into many American institutions to anyone who loves unconventional memoirs and beautiful writing.—Willem Marx
2022-11-10
The author of The Ungrateful Refugee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, probes the boundary between belief and disbelief.
As she did in her previous book, Nayeri dances smoothly between memoir and the stories of others, drawing on her own formative years as an Iranian seeking—and being granted—asylum in the U.S. but moving beyond the experiences of refugees to explore other circumstances when belief and disbelief collide, often catastrophically: her childhood skepticism of the glossolalists in her mother’s ecstatic church, the interrogation techniques that too often lead the innocent to falsely confess to crimes, her McKinsey training in the cultivation of trust in her clients, staged Soviet films of survivors of Nazi mass shootings, and her refusal to accept her partner's brother’s mental illness. The author braids the story of a Sri Lankan torture survivor seeking asylum in the U.K. throughout the narrative as well as inevitable references to Kafka, their effectiveness unblunted by familiarity. Nayeri draws on both the work of organizations such as the Innocence Project and Great Britain’s Freedom From Torture and the writings of thinkers including Blaise Pascal, Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag, and, most extensively, Simone Weil. She ranges from her own uncertain faith to the cruelty of a culture that insists on “misfits and oddballs and quirky people” in works of fiction but strict conformity to a predetermined performance of credibility in the real world. Nayeri writes elegantly but a little claustrophobically. Readers spend a great deal of time with the author, her partner, their daughter, and the friends who sheltered through Covid-19 lockdown with them in a small town in Provence. She grapples with epistemology and with her partner’s acute distress at his brother’s illness, juxtaposing her private anguish with her examination of the suffering of others.
An unflinching, compelling look at how “calcified hearts believe”—and disbelieve.
