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Refuge: A Novel Paperback – July 10, 2018

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 193 ratings

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“Rich and colorful… [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere.” –New York Times

The moving lifetime relationship between a father and a daughter, seen through the prism of global immigration and the contemporary refugee experience.


An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays behind. Over twenty years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer they are apart, the more their lives diverge, but also the more each comes to need the other's wisdom and, ultimately, rescue. Meanwhile, refugees of all nationalities are flowing into Europe under troubling conditions. Wanting to help, but also looking for a lost sense of home, our grown-up transplant finds herself quickly entranced by a world that is at once everything she has missed and nothing that she has ever known. Will her immersion in the lives of these new refugees allow her the grace to save her father?

Refuge charts the deeply moving lifetime relationship between a father and a daughter, seen through the prism of global immigration. Beautifully written, full of insight, charm, and humor, the novel subtly exposes the parts of ourselves that get left behind in the wake of diaspora and ultimately asks: Must home always be a physical place, or can we find it in another person?
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Nayeri's] exploration of the exile’s predicament is tender and urgent." –The New Yorker

“Rich and colorful… 
[Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere.” –New York Times

"Crystalline, vivid, moving, and without pretensions, Nayeri’s writing is fluid and spare…
Refuge is a timely novel, about a theme that touches and moves so many, no matter where you are from." –Los Angeles Review of Books

“[An] urgent, resonating contemporary story, highlighting today’s scattered, displaced, lost, all-forced-to-be refugees in search of the titular refuge... Nayeri carefully illuminates the plight of the ever-searching, never-belonging global wanderer.” 
–The Christian Science Monitor

“As the daughter of an immigrant father, the cultural divides that can exist within families is always on my mind. I love stories that explore questions of home, a central theme of Refuge. How do we relate to the homes of our parents, especially if they aren’t ours? How do we build homes when we haven’t left the old ones freely?” –Elle 

"Dina Nayeri focuses on the relationship between an Iranian father and daughter as they explore the experience of exile from different sides of the world and there is so much beauty and pain expressed in her prose... I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know. It’s stunning." –Buzzfeed

“The immigrant experience is at the heart of Dina Nayeri’s powerful novel of a family split by circumstances.” 
–Minneapolis Star-Tribune 

“A lush, brimming novel of exile.”
–Newsday 

"Topical and urgent." 
–W Magazine

“A nuanced look at what it means to seek refuge; novels don’t get more timely than this.” –The Millions

“Dina Nayeri’s 
Refuge is a searing and moving meditation on the migrant experience…Against the ebb and flow of their separations and reconciliations, Nayeri charts the desperate journeys and the hopes and fates of other refugees of different nationalities seeking sanctuary in Europe. A timely read and a compelling one.” –Malcolm Forbes for The National

Refuge should be required summer reading in 2017… a beautiful and poignant portrait of the many different experiences of the displaced. A timely and necessary work... a vital read for anyone trying to understand what it means to lose and look for home.”–Bustle 

“Nayeri, who was an Iranian refugee herself, has written a novel that explores the current worldwide refugee crisis through the lens of a father-daughter relationship.” –Brightly 

“Niloo’s story, and her complex relationship with her father, expose a narrative of immigration that is necessary and nuanced.” –Read It Forward

"A poignant reflection on the plight of refugees… Nayeri uses gentle humor and evocative prose to illuminate the power of familial bonds and to bestow individuality on those anonymous people caught between love of country and need for refuge. A beautiful addition to the burgeoning literature of exile.” –Library Journal (starred review)

“Richly imagined and frequently moving… [manages] various threads—the personal, the political, the cultural, the generational—deftly, and the result is poignant, wise, and often funny…a vital, timely novel about what it means to seek refuge.” —Kirkus

“Set against landscapes of political unrest, Nayeri’s novel of a daughter and father seeking to reconcile their long-distance perceptions of family offers a captivating, multilayered exploration of lives caught between worlds.” —Booklist

“A heart-splicing portrayal of the current refugee crisis...These are people who, seeking asylum, arrive in countries that aren’t their own but must be made inhabitable, if not home.” —The Riveter

“A nuanced and remarkably textured narrative about a world few of us experience.” –BookPage 

“Nayeri’s prose sings while moving nimbly with equal parts seriousness and humor.” —Publishers Weekly

"Beautifully elegiac, Refuge brings into focus the entire experience of emigration… Nayeri is brilliant on parental imperfections and the negotiations children make with their families, and she offers a remarkably textured portrayal of drug addiction and of everyday Iran that defies news-media stereotypes."  —Matthew Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

“Dina Nayeri’s prose has something all too rare in books these days: a wild, beating heart. Read this book to feel your own heart expand.” —Boris Fishman, author of
 A Replacement Life

"For anyone who has wondered about the distance between contemporary American and Iranian lives and thought, this book is essential reading. If any book can close that distance, this one can." —Charles Baxter, author of 
The Feast of Love

"Deeply felt . . . I was completely taken up by this book--invigorated by the intelligence, and inspired by the sensual descriptions of Iranian food and Amsterdam life. I'll keep this one in my bookshelf of favorites." —Alice Elliott Dark, author of 
Naked to the WaistThink of England, and In the Gloaming 

About the Author

Dina Nayeri is the author of the acclaimed viral essay “The Ungrateful Refugee,” published in The Guardian in 2017,and the novel A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, which was translated into fourteen languages. A graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the O. Henry Prize, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bogliasco Foundation, and several other artist residencies.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (July 10, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0399573259
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0399573255
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.13 x 0.84 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 193 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
193 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the story captivating and compelling. They praise the writing quality and narration as great. The characters are described as flawed yet beautiful.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

8 customers mention "Enlightened story"8 positive0 negative

Customers find the story engaging and compelling. They enjoy the book's writing style and find it enlightening. The storyline is good, and the author is described as honest, open, and gracious.

"I absolutely loved this novel. This is a beautiful book about the immigrant experience for Persians in Amsterdam, which is quite different from that..." Read more

"Interesting book. The storyline was good. Shows the damage addiction brings to a family." Read more

"I love this book... the story is inspiring, easy to follow, and not cliche or too predictable...." Read more

"A necessary narrative, but it dragged at times. Overall, it was very compelling and enlightening. I'm glad I read it!" Read more

4 customers mention "Writing quality"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing quality engaging and enlightening. They praise the narration and author's skill.

"...The author is brilliant, sharp, sweet, honest, open and so gracious to answer our questions by phone during our book club...." Read more

"A necessary narrative, but it dragged at times. Overall, it was very compelling and enlightening. I'm glad I read it!" Read more

"This is a wonderful narration that both captivates and educates. I am grateful for this book and and hope there will be more." Read more

"Captivating story, great writing..." Read more

3 customers mention "Character development"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's character development. They find the characters flawed yet beautiful.

"...The secondary and peripheral characters are spot on as archetypes, and her classification of the four Iranian exile groups is funny and accurate...." Read more

"a sensitive stirring glimpse into an Iranian family and some very touching characters. there's a little of all of us in each of them." Read more

"...I was sad when the book ended. Ms. Nayeri crafts such flawed and beautiful characters that I was really disappointed to have to say good-bye!..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2017
    I absolutely loved this novel. This is a beautiful book about the immigrant experience for Persians in Amsterdam, which is quite different from that of those in Los Angeles. It's about addiction, food, the relationship of a father and her daughter, abandonment, divorce, trying to escape from your own culture, tribe, and ultimately finding yourself, falling in love with yourself and embracing your tribe. I loved her anthropological categorization of Persians outside Iran into four groups. I loved her description of how fathers treating their daughters badly leads to mothers spoiling their sons which leads to the sons becoming fathers who treat their wives badly. The author is brilliant, sharp, sweet, honest, open and so gracious to answer our questions by phone during our book club. I'm looking forward to reading her first novel and future works.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2017
    Interesting book. The storyline was good. Shows the damage addiction brings to a family.
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2017
    I love this book... the story is inspiring, easy to follow, and not cliche or too predictable. often times, with fiction books, I find myself irked early on in the story when the writing is poor/too cliche, but that was not the case with this one. it was my first fiction book in a while I was really happy with!
  • Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018
    A necessary narrative, but it dragged at times. Overall, it was very compelling and enlightening. I'm glad I read it!
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2017
    To be honest, this book hits too close for me to be objective about its merits to a broader audience. What I can say is, that like all great fiction, it tells the truth. The secondary and peripheral characters are spot on as archetypes, and her classification of the four Iranian exile groups is funny and accurate. But it was the internal life of the main character that hit home with me. My guess is that if you got to this review, you are going to enjoy this book.
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2017
    Absorbing novel about the immigrant experience in the US and about those left behind.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2017
    This is a wonderful narration that both captivates and educates. I am grateful for this book and and hope there will be more.
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2017
    a sensitive stirring glimpse into an Iranian family and some very touching characters. there's a little of all of us in each of them.

Top reviews from other countries

  • Rose
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in Canada on October 15, 2017
    Beautiful storytelling
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic story
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2018
    Loved this book. Amazing relationship between opium addicted father and refugee daughter seen during their four visits together in different parts of the world. Sad to let them go when it ended.
  • Kathryn D
    3.0 out of 5 stars A 3.5 star read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2021
    I wanted to like this book more but I just didn’t enjoy Bahman’s segments. They didn’t flow as nicely as Niloo’s.
    The story itself follows a family as they split up and seek refuge in the US while their father, an opium addict, stays in Iran. Their relationship stays very strained throughout their lives. After fighting so hard to shake off her refuge status, Niloo finds comfort in spending time with other Iranian refugees in her new home, The Netherlands, while she tries to find her life’s direction.