Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to the author of The Ungrateful Refugee, Dina Nayeri.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Dina Nayeri: The Little Black Fish by Samad Behrangi. This was a subversive children’s book that my mother gave me as a child, about a little fish who sets out into the wide ocean. I think it slipped by the authorities as harmless early in my childhood, but was later banned.
BM: Favorite re-read?
DN: Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext. Actually, I re-read most of his craft books every few years as a refresher. In lazy moments, I forget the power of the unspoken. Recently I read a screenwriting book called Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald that will definitely go into my rotation, because it’s all about this: the power of the unspoken, establishing subtext.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
DN: I think it’s much more in conversation with certain philosophers than it is with most modern books on immigration. John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, for example, or Orwell’s essays.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
DN: The History of Love Nicole Krauss and Women Talking by Miriam Toewes. “Blew my mind” isn’t a complete description of what these books did to me. They blew my heart.
BM: Last book you read?
DN: A book of the best plays from the Royal Court Theatre in London. I’m really into drama these days. I wrote a play over the spring lockdown! A whole play… And I adapted one of my own stories into a screenplay in the summer. I’m so proud of myself.
BM: A book that made you cry?
DN: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was weeping as I turned the last page, and then my then-partner came home and thought I was being silly. We weren’t right for each other.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
DN: Did this year happen? My relationship with time became pretty unhinged this year, so I’m going to say Aysegul Savas’s brilliant book Walking on the Ceiling even though technically it came out last year. Also, can I give a shout-out for an upcoming book? Her Here by Amanda Dennis! Pre-order it because it’s amazing.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
DN: Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and Sam Lypsite’s The Ask.
Actually Wells Tower assigned us the Lypsyte when he was teaching at Iowa. So I guess I just like his sense of humor. It’s subtle, and dry, and oh so devastating.
I also laugh out loud when I read Sedaris.
BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?
DN: Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Maybe it could have helped me reject (even a little) the constant diet of sexual shame I was being fed by the church.
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
DN: Robert McFarlane’s Underland, because it’s gorgeously written, so profound and insightful, and also the hardback jacket is a piece of art. You could frame it.
BM: Classic book you hate?
DN: Moby-Dick. I just can’t.
BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?
DN: One Hundred Years of Solitude. I keep starting it and getting distracted by other books.
BM: What’s a book with a really great sex scene?
DN: A Sport and a Pastime. And Salter in general. I can’t quote any of it, because I’ll blush.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
DN: Jokes for the Gunmen by Mazen Maarouf. It’s war from the surprising lens of a child, funny and sad and wonderful.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
DN: Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I was so obsessed with that book in high school. I was a dark kid. I kept trying to figure out when exactly Ralph lost to Jack. And I was obsessed with all the biblical imagery and references. I loved that I could pass off my obsession with all the most gruesome and sordid bits as “bible study.” Hah!
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
DN: All of Tessa Hadley’s short stories. I’m deep into a Tessa Hadley phase.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
DN: Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty. I love that whole series for my daughter (Rosie Revere, Engineer. Iggy Peck, Architect). It’s clever and funny and such a good tool for raising a smart, strong, confident girl.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
DN: I’m reading a lot about adaptations now and have decided that I don’t want any of my favorites adapted. Each medium is made for a different kind of story. Novels are good for internal struggle. Television and film are visual. Great adaptations are their own art: they alter the original material fundamentally, keeping a nugget of the original idea, and maybe some scenes. But they’re not made to satisfy the fans of the book. And they shouldn’t be.
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Dina Nayeri was born in Iran during the revolution and arrived in America when she was ten years old. She is the winner of the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, as well as a finalist for the Rome Prize and a Granta New Voices Project pick. Nayeri is the author of The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, out now in paperback from Catapult. She’s also the author of two novels—Refuge and A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea—and her work has been translated into fourteen languages and published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and many other publications. The Ungrateful Refugee is her first book of nonfiction. A graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in London.
Dina Nayeri’s The Ungrateful Refugee is out now in paperback from Catapult
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