The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Nayeri, Daniel. Everything Sad Is Untrue. Levine Querido, 2020.

Daniel Nayeri's novel Everything Sad Is Untrue is told from the first person point of view of the 12-year-old protagonist, Daniel. The novel employs a fragmented, patchwork structure, and is told predominantly in the present tense. The following summary adheres to a more streamlined and linear mode of explanation.

Daniel Nayeri grows up in Isfahan, Iran with his mother Sima, father Masoud, and sister Dina. Both of Daniel's parents are doctors. They are also committed Shiite Muslims. The family is wealthy, comfortable, and happy.

Then one year, Daniel's family travels to London, England for his mother's sister's wedding. While in England, Dina almost loses one of her fingers after a bully slams her hand in a door jamb. Following a trip to the emergency room, the doctors sew Dina's finger back on. Dina spends some time recovering in a room by herself. When she finally emerges, she announces that she has seen an angel. Daniel's maternal grandmother, Ellie, is a practicing Christian, and is thus convinced that Dina has in fact seen Jesus. When she tells Sima that her daughter is now a Christian, Sima becomes curious. She starts exploring the Christian faith, converts, and is baptized.

Despite the dangers of returning to Iran as a professing Christian, Sima does not abandon her faith. She even begins attending an underground Christian church. Masoud is furious and terrified, and beats Sima for her stubbornness. Still, Sima does not abandon her newfound beliefs. Then one day, while Sima is shopping at the market, the secret police capture her and interrogate her. They threaten to kill her and her family if she does not provide them with the names of everyone in her church.

Instead of cooperating with the police, Sima decides to flee Iran with Daniel and Dina. Masoud stays behind, much to Daniel's disappointment. Following a brief and tenuous stint in Dubai, the family then relocates to a refugee camp in Italy. The camp is in fact a hotel called Hotel Barba. Though they are more safe in Italy than they were in Iran, Hotel Barba is another form of death. For several years, Sima struggles to secure asylum for her family in the United States.

Finally, the family receives asylum and moves to Edmond, Oklahoma. Not long later, Sima remarries a violent man named Ray. Dina hates him, and constantly tells Daniel that the only reason Sima is with him is because she wants Daniel to have a father figure.

Daniel tries his best in school, but is accepted by no one. He thinks that his classmates would like him better if they only knew his story. However, whenever Daniel tries to relay stories from his past, his peers insist that he is lying and bully him.

Over the course of the entire novel, Daniel is desperate to remember and record all of his experiences from before Edmond. He believes that if he does not do so as soon as possible, the entirety of his past will dissolve. By the end of the narrative, Daniel learns that sharing one’s story is a form of love. He knows that not everything he remembers is entirely true, but it is true to how he experienced and understood it.