...[an] intimate and thought-provoking novel ... Crystalline, vivid, moving, and without pretensions, Nayeri’s writing is fluid and spare. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, and even if you are claustrophobic, don’t be afraid of submerging into the spellbinding world of Refuge. Her prose doesn’t have the heaviness of the subjects she writes about, and this is a true gift. In magical ways, she creates poetry ... Refuge is a timely novel, about a theme that touches and moves so many, no matter where you are from ... While this all seem like a solemn portrait of a broken family, Nayeri is actually very funny, and the book is full of color and flavor.
...both a commemoration of the ties that bind us and an indictment of the estrangement that isolates, and even kills, us ... With eyes wide open, Nayeri is not afraid to expose her characters as flawed, even unlikable. Caught between desperation and expectation, arrogance looms large: Bahman as the male patriarch whose less-than-thoughtful choices nearly destroy multiple lives, Niloo as the self-absorbed loner too damaged by fearful distrust to accept life-saving support. Presenting father and daughter in multi-faceted splendor, however, comes at a literary price for Nayeri: her intense involvement with Bahman and Niloo tends to eclipse her other, clearly lesser supporting cast ... Nayeri carefully illuminates the plight of the ever-searching, never-belonging global wanderer.
The strains and indignities that come with remaking a life are what give Refuge poignancy and relevance ... Nayeri’s prose can be rich and colorful, bolts of words prettily unfurling; it can also be florid, melodramatic — she sometimes writes with a heavy hand as well as a heavy heart, particularly in the last third of her book ... But Refuge also has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere ... The novel may indulge in a few purple paragraphs too many. But that won’t stop many readers from responding to it with affection — and perhaps recognition. What person, in adulthood, doesn’t feel him- or herself twisting into impossible shapes?
...a lush, brimming novel of exile ... grafted onto an intriguing father-daughter story is a more didactic and unsubtle one. Nayeri’s politics are leftist — she wrote an essay for the Guardian in April titled 'The Ungrateful Refugee: "We Have No Debt to Repay," ' which has been shared more than 80,000 times. She makes this case more powerfully in the newspaper than in the novel ... The writer dedicates Refuge to her 'insatiable Persian family, a scattered village of poets and pleasure-seekers.' The company of their fictional versions is rewarding indeed.
Nayeri’s prose sings while moving nimbly with equal parts seriousness and humor. And by the bittersweet conclusion, readers may find themselves longing for the strength to say that they, too, 'tore something precious from the clenched fist of the universe.'”
...richly imagined and frequently moving in its descriptions of the neither-here-nor-there immigrant’s life ... Nayeri manages these various threads—the personal, the political, the cultural, the generational—deftly, and the result is poignant, wise, and often funny. But not all the characters are equally drawn, and Niloo’s brother and mother get the short shrift: though they make various appearances in the narrative, they never come together as full-fledged characters ... A vital, timely novel about what it means to seek refuge.
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.
