Iranian-born author Daniel Nayeri's middle-grade novels Everything Sad Is Untrue and The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams received between them the Michael L. Printz Award, a Newbery Honor, a Middle East Book Award, and a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor. The Teacher of Nomad Land, a tightly crafted odyssey about two siblings in World War II Iran, seems unlikely to break Nayeri's award-winning streak.
After occupying British soldiers kill their father, 14-year-old Babak and nine-year-old Sana, now orphans, leave their hometown. They're determined to travel with the nomadic Bakhtiari tribe, with whom their father worked as a teacher. The tribe agrees to take the orphans if Babak demonstrates his ability to serve the tribe as his father did, but Babak fails to prove his worth. The children get lost on their way back to town, and a Nazi spy ostensibly searching for a 13-year-old Polish Jewish boy finds the siblings instead, drawing them all into a multifaceted conflict with no straightforward solutions.
Nayeri's gifts for understatement, restraint, and split-second swings between humor and emotional devastation are on full display, and all three make for an affecting read. At times, the novel has the feel of a parable, but the specificity of Nayeri's characterizations and dialogue keep it grounded in "the land of the here and now." It all builds to a climax that, in less skilled hands, would feel far-fetched, but here feels pleasantly surprising yet inevitable. Surely Nayeri will someday publish a less-than-perfect novel--but he hasn't yet. --Stephanie Appell, freelance book reviewer