Dinaw Mengestu – författare

Dinaw Mengestu''s first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, earned the young writer comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald, and Naipaul, and garnered ecstatic critical praise and awards around the world for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience. Now Mengestu enriches the themes that defined his debut with a heartbreaking literary masterwork about love, family, and the power of imagination, which confirms his reputation as one of the brightest talents of his generation.

One early September afternoon, Yosef and Mariam, young Ethiopian immigrants who have spent all but their first year of marriage apart, set off on a road trip from their new home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of a new identity as an American couple. Soon, their son, Jonas, will be born in Illinois. Thirty years later, Yosef has died, and Jonas needs to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. How can he envision his future without knowing what has come before? Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas sets out to retrace his mother and father''s trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents'' youth to his life in the America of today, a story—real or invented—that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.

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In Uganda, two young men get caught up in a revolt against the post-colonial regime in the early 1970s. As the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart - one of them into the deepest peril. In a quiet town in the America Midwest, an exotic stranger arrives: an exchange student from Africa called Isaac. Helen, the social worker asked to help him settle in, quickly falls for him, though she soon learns to keep their affair hidden from prejudiced eyes. And she soon realises that Isaac is haunted by his mysterious past. Switching back and forth between Africa and America, this taut, searing novel blazes with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives. Writing within the tradition of Naipaul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, self-determination, and the names we are given and the names we earn.

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, STYLIST, AND GRANTA

A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR

''Haunting . . . perfectly attuned to what it means to roam freely as an immigrant in America''Guardian

''No book this year moved or thrilled me more''Garth Greenwell, author of Small RainA heartbreaking novel about loss, family and exile, from the winner of the Guardian First Book AwardAfter abandoning his once promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Helen - a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love, but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage on the verge of collapse, he leaves his young family and returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington DC that defined his childhood.

At its center is Mamush''s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father-figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.

What follows is an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions Mamush has been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel''s life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them.

''It was obvious from the start that Dinaw Mengestu was adding something extraordinary to American literature''Washington Post

''Dinaw Mengestu thinks deeply about how stories are told, especially migrant tales''New York Times''This meticulously crafted gem is not merely read; it is experienced ''Steve Toltz, author of Here Goes Nothing

LONGLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015

Two young friends join an uprising against Uganda''s corrupt regime in the early 1970s. As the line blurs between idealism and violence, one of them flees for his life.

In a quiet Midwestern town in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, an African student falls for the woman who helps him settle in. Prejudice overshadows their relationship, yet it is equally haunted by the past.

Both men are called Isaac. But are they one and the same?