The Author (Dina Nayeri)

Dina Nayeri was born in Iran in 1979, and began her journey as a refugee when she was eight years old. Her mother, a doctor who was facing prosecution in Iran because of her Christian beliefs, fled the conservative Muslim country with Dina and her younger brother in 1988. As the family passed through Europe on their way to America, the author writes, she encountered a wide range of refugees and experiences which, she adds, she fictionalized in her novels but is writing about in this book as a first-time memoir.

As she writes of her time before, during, and after her journey, Nayeri portrays herself as having a questioning mind and a determination to succeed. She also represents herself as having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD. She makes no clear, explicit connection between these three aspects of her life and identity, but there is a...