The question driving Dina Nayeri’s latest book, “who gets believed?”, is deceptively simple. The Iranian-American novelist, once a child refugee, weaves stories from her own life with those people who were wrongly denied asylum in the UK and US. In doing so, she shows how “the accident of birth, the privilege of race, class, and nationality” often trumps “data, history, science, and reason” when it comes to whose voices are heard, and whose truths acknowledged. The consequences can be devastating.
The book is instantly gripping, opening with the story of a Sri Lankan refugee known only as KV. He arrived in Britain in 2011 as an asylum seeker with scars on his back and an account of being tortured by the Sri Lankan government. Despite the support of medical experts, his asylum claim was rejected. KV was accused of inflicting the injuries on himself, kickstarting an eight-year legal battle that reached the UK supreme court.
