Daniel Nayeri’s mid­dle-grade nov­el, The Teacher of Nomad Land, is set in a World War II loca­tion that many read­ers might find unex­pect­ed. Because of its cru­cial oil sup­ply, both Britain and the Sovi­et Union occu­pied Iran in order to pre­vent Nazi access to this resource. Refract­ing his­to­ry through the lens of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, Nay­eri tells the sto­ry of an orphaned broth­er and sis­ter who try to sur­vive by draw­ing on their father’s role as a teacher. 

In con­cise­ly craft­ed lan­guage that is both poet­ic and nat­ur­al, the author draws read­ers into a for­eign world pop­u­lat­ed by rec­og­niz­able fig­ures. Babak and Sana are only chil­dren, thir­teen and eight years old, but the harsh con­di­tions of war have made their sit­u­a­tion ten­u­ous. When their tem­po­rary shel­ter with inad­e­quate pro­tec­tors falls short, they aban­don their urban, Per­sian lan­guage and homes to become tem­po­rary nomads, trav­el­ing with a Bakhtiari-speak­ing tribe through the Zagros Moun­tains in the country’s north­west region.

Lan­guage is a uni­fy­ing theme of the nov­el; Nay­eri inge­nious­ly weaves ref­er­ences to its obsta­cles and its uni­fy­ing aspects, as char­ac­ters com­mu­ni­cate, or strug­gle to do so, across eth­nic and nation­al bar­ri­ers. Per­sian, Bakhtiari, Hebrew, Ger­man, and Eng­lish inter­act on the lev­el of metaphor, but also in a con­crete way. As Babak tries to teach basic lit­er­a­cy to the nomads in order to earn a share of their resources, Babak inven­tive­ly sug­gests that Kur­dish and Bakhtiari are like sis­ters, with Far­si their com­mon moth­er. Babak’s sim­ple chalk­board, com­bined with his father’s lega­cy as a teacher, becomes a flex­i­ble vehi­cle for ani­mat­ing let­ters and sounds.

Ten­sion builds as Babak and Sana encounter unpre­dictable ene­mies and allies. A chance meet­ing with a British sol­dier ulti­mate­ly plays a part in the novel’s res­o­lu­tion, in Nayeri’s intri­cate and care­ful­ly paced nar­ra­tive. A vin­dic­tive Ger­man in pur­suit of a Jew­ish boy intro­duces char­ac­ters whose per­son­al­i­ties and fates are whol­ly indi­vid­ual, but also emblem­at­ic of the larg­er con­flict. Although Ben, the uproot­ed Jew­ish boy, does not appear until halfway through the book, his sig­nif­i­cance is fore­shad­owed long before, from Babak and Sana’s first meet­ing with his neme­sis, Vulf. When Ben relates his com­plex tale of loss, Babak and Sana lis­ten to him and val­i­date his expe­ri­ence. Once again, the con­nec­tions between lan­guage and iden­ti­ty are at the core of their rela­tion­ship: ​“Ben has to learn Far­si to get by. The chil­dren in Pales­tine will have to learn Hebrew. Life is full of such lessons, and so few fathers to teach them.”

The dis­til­la­tion of poet­ry and his­to­ry in the lives of refugees pro­duces many dif­fer­ent out­comes in this unusu­al and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed nov­el. Nayeri’s unob­tru­sive autho­r­i­al voice allows Babak, Sana, Ben, and oth­ers to recount their expe­ri­ences with inten­si­ty and con­vic­tion. The book includes a detailed after­word and sug­ges­tions for fur­ther reading.