Everything Sad Is Untrue

by Daniel Nayeri

At the front of a middle-school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much.

But Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy...and further back to the fields near the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of the sunset had burst over everything, and further back still to the jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.

Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story).

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Audiobook, Middle Grade, Book Club, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

Audiobook

First published August 25, 2020

About the author

Daniel Nayeri is a writer and editor in New York City. He wrote and produced The Cult of Sincerity, the first feature film to be world-premiered by YouTube. He has had all kinds of jobs around books, including book repairman, literary agent, used bookstore clerk, children's librarian, Official Story-Time Reader Leader, editor, copy-editor, and even carpenter (making bookshelves). He's also a professional pastry chef. He loves Street Fighter 2, hates the word "foodie," and is an award-winning stuntman.

Daniel and his sister/co-writer Dina were both born in Iran and spent many young adult years in Europe. There they learned several languages between them and tried Frosted Flakes for the first time.