A Happy Death

All Fours meets Albert Camus in this joyful, mordant, poignant, and engrossing novel by “a master storyteller” (The Guardian)

Middle-aged and done with the cheap promises of capitalism, the biting, horny, and philosophical Mina abandons Manhattan for Edinburgh and a life devoted to pleasure and solitude. She joins a sauna, takes up jiu-jitsu, and scours dating apps for play with men half her age. But when she meets Maisie, a sassy old Scotswoman, and Robert, a terminal American client with a memoir to write, the purpose of her life suddenly, and very brightly, comes into focus. An uproarious, unforgettable portrait, A Happy Death explores the monumental surprises that life can bring as one woman attempts to seize all she can for herself and everyone around her. 

“Nayeri faces our greatest fear head on: how do we approach our own death and . . . live as fully, exuberantly, and vividly as we can before that day arrives? The answer lies within these pages: community, chosen family, sensuality, and a joy that spreads unstoppably from the center of a big heart into the world beyond. A brilliant, hilarious book.”

—Fiona Mozley, author of the Booker-shortlisted Elmet
 

“In Dina Nayeri’s capable hands, A Happy Death expands into a moving exploration of what we owe to ourselves, our friends and neighbors, and even the strangers we encounter on dating apps, at the public sauna, and on the mat in jiu-jitsu class.”

—Tom Perrotta, author of Ghost Town

• “Exhilarating, clever, kind and funny; I delight in writing like this that has cool intelligence and a warm heart.”
  Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness and Ghost Wall
• “A Happy Death is a tender, slyly comic novel about a woman who tries to be selfish and ends up opening her heart to the people around her. In Dina Nayeri’s capable hands, what starts out as an amusing character study expands into a moving exploration of what we owe to ourselves, our friends and neighbors, and even the strangers we encounter on dating apps, at the public sauna, and on the mat in jiu-jitsu class.”
  Tom Perrotta, author of Ghost Town
• "Nayeri faces our greatest fear head on: how do we approach our own death and how do we make sure we live as fully, exuberantly, and vividly as we can before that day arrives? The answer lies within these pages: community, chosen family, sensuality, and a joy that spreads unstoppably from the centre of a big heart into the world beyond. This is a brilliant, hilarious book."
  Fiona Mozley, author of Elmet, shortlisted for the Booker Prize
• ​​“Dina Nayeri has gone deep into the wilds of midlife and emerged with something so hilarious, so real, and so delightfully, viscerally weird that it makes being lost in those wilds myself feel almost bearable.”
  Emily Flake, New Yorker cartoonist and author of Mama Tried
• Praise for Dina Nayeri
  
  The Ungrateful Refugee
  Winner 2020 Clara Johnson Award“Nayeri uses her first work of nonfiction to remind readers of the pain and horrors refugees face before and long after their settlement. . . . . telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times
  
  “A work of astonishing, insistent importance… This is a book full of revelatory truths, moments where we are plunged deeply and painfully into the quotidian experience of the refugee. ” —The Observer
  
  "Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart.” —Minnesota Star Tribune
  Who Gets Believed: When the Truth Isn't Enough
  Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
  
  "An ambitious and moving exploration of the borders we draw around credible victimhood, and will cement Nayeri’s position as a master storyteller of the refugee experience.” —Aamna Mohdin, The Guardian“Memoir, philosophy, and social history collide in this compelling examination. . . . [A] powerful, clarifying book.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
  Refuge
  “Rich and colorful… [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere.” –New York Times