“Everything Sad is Untrue” is Daniel Nayeri’s story of fleeing Iran with his mother and sister. By a series of minor miracles, the family evades Iran’s secret police and gets to Italy, where they stop at a refugee camp for a few years before landing in Oklahoma. Born Khosrou, he is now Daniel.
The story swirls in time like an Oklahoma cyclone with bits of Persian artifacts caught in the swirl.
Starting at 8 years old, Nayeri stands before his American classmates and tells wild stories structured like a French braid. Choose your metaphor.
He takes strands from the Persian culture of myths, pulls in strands of ancestors he knows through stories, all from his own immigrant childhood. You hear about evil uncles who betrayed his grandmother — another strong Persian woman who fled Iran.
Speaking of the uncles, Nayeri dispenses universal wisdom, such as, “One is the kind of villain who wants more for himself. The other is the kind who wants less for others.”
He admits he doesn’t have all the details, so some are speculated. He walks us through how he chooses those details, and along the way teaches us how to write. Scheherazade wove stories to entertain the king to keep herself alive. Daniel tells stories in an attempt to enter a new culture and be known for who he is.
“I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad,” he writes. “I pick my nose. I don’t know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don’t know what anybody wants from me. ... Like you, I want a friend.”
See how gracefully he invokes “you,” the second person? We feel completely involved in his world, including the tarofing — where you compete with your neighbors in lies so polite you can’t find the truth. This is Persian etiquette.
Nayeri shows so much — the cruelty of children who dismiss him — but never does it feel like he’s whining. On the contrary, he’s insisting on being known. And food plays a big part.
“Soon the dinner carpet was full with trays of kebab, grilled onions and tomatoes, platters of fresh chives, green and purple basil, cilantro, radishes and dill,” he writes. “A stew of chickpea, lamb, crispy shallots and fried mint was the khan’s favorite.”As he advances to middle school and loving Kelly, he says, “I don’t want to stop just because she laughs at me. I want to stay in love with her until she realizes I am a person.”
This book is like no other. This new publisher, Levine Querido, is like no other. Check both of them out. Please.
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November 22, 2020 at 10:00PM
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Patricia Hruby Powell | 'Everything Sad is Untrue' a true story of author's escape from Iran - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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