“Sayrafiezadeh’s prose is direct and rhythmic, his short and sure sentences moving with the confidence of stated fact.” —A.V. Club

Sayrafiezadeh captures one of the most essential feelings of the modern-day United States, apathy, and holds us to that feeling.” —Chicago Review of Books

“The consummate outsider, Sayrafiezadeh examines our nation’s sins with a particularly clear eye, and his latest collection of short stories, American Estrangement, is no exception.” —The Millions

“[A] vision of American life that is thoughtful and thought-provoking…These are significant stories written in powerful prose.” —Book Reporter

“A haunting book, and filled with longing.” —Hilton Als, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of White Girls

“With insightful humor and a keen eye for offbeat details, Sayrafiezadeh, entertaining and political without being heavy-handed, is a force to be reckoned with.” —Jonathan Fullmer

“Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a slyly subversive absurdist whose true subject is the deeply serious matter of our obligations to one another as human beings.” —John Burnham Schwartz

“Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a masterful storyteller, working from deep in the American grain.” —Philip Gourevitch

“Sayrafiezadeh’s genius is not only in the way he almost painfully keeps our attention on the powers at play in these peoples’ lives, but in his sentences themselves. His deceptively simple prose has a grip that gently pulls but never slackens. The words and images pour in and the reader is pulled in, on and through these stories effortlessly, stories that seem to get better with each read.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Gritty, compelling stories about our embattled working class. This is a thrilling report from the trenches.” —Edmund White, author of Jack Holmes and His Friend

“[Sayrafiezadeh] uses his considerable writing talent to reveal how ideology seeps not only into the logistics and protocols of our lives, but also into the marrow of our characters.” —World Affairs Journal

“[Sayrafiezadeh] writes with grace and clarity about growing up juggling deprivation and desire.” —Time