I don’t know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. After a story he recounts in class garners criticism, for example, he comments, “They don’t believe me because I’m some poor refugee kid who smells like pickles and garlic, and has lice, and I’m probably making up stories to feel important” (3).Įxiled in a land where he doesn’t belong, torn from family he doesn’t remember, with even his name ripped from him (no one in Oklahoma could pronounce his given name, Khosrou), to win his audience he appeals to the One who has made all of us: “I am ugly and I speak funny. He acquaints us with his story gradually, beginning with awkward moments at school in Oklahoma, where he spends most of his time concocting elaborate strategies to avoid bullying and embarrassment. While this life will bend and break us, someone will return who will make everything sad untrue. The narrative evolves in a nonlinear fashion, with sections more akin to journal entries than chapters. Nayeri describes his book as an autobiographical novel or a literary memoir he’s retelling his own history but from the point of view of himself as a 12-year-old. He reminds us that while this life will bend and break us, someone will return who will make everything sad untrue. In Everything Sad Is Untrue, Nayeri invites us into his family’s journey of courage and heartbreak, and in so doing, he points us to the hope that sustained him through the tempest. His hope in the unseen courses through stories of bullying and refugee camps, tragic Persian poems, and his longing to connect with classmates who don’t understand him.

Even more profound, even more vital, is the theme of faith-of our hope in Christ-that pulses like a beating heart at the center of his narrative. But Nayeri offers readers something even more precious than the shattering images and reflections that he strings through the book like pearls. These riches alone are enough to reward those who dive into Everything Sad Is Untrue. He weaves fragments of myth and personal history into his story, with threads intricately looping like the magnificent Persian rugs he describes (some of them studded with jewels, as can also be said of his prose). His poignant memoir invites readers into the struggles of a refugee caught between a homeland he can no longer claim as his own and a new life in which he feels adrift. (You can listen to Collin Hansen’s Gospelbound interview with Nayeri.) Daniel Nayeri’s heart-wrenching, evocative, and at times hilarious autobiographical novel, Everything Sad Is Untrue, has earned widespread acclaim since its release in 2020, with starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly and praise from the New York Times, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.

Everything sad untrue