DINAW MENGESTU

L’Isaac és un noi ugandès que arriba als Estats Units fugint d’una cruenta guerra a la llunyana Àfrica. La Helen, una assistent social de Laurel, serà l’encarregada d’acollir l’Isaac, d’ajudar-lo a r

Dinaw Mengestus first novel, Children of the Revolution, earned him comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald and Naipaul, garnered ecstatic critical praise and won the Guardian First Book Award for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience in America. Now, he enriches the themes that defined his debut in a story that captures two generations of an immigrant family.

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.

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 powerful and moving summer read that explores love, grief and the reality of the contemporary American immigrant experienceJonas, fresh from a failed marriage, is desperate to make sense of the tie

Dinaw Mengestu entre els 20 millors escriptors segonsThe New Yorker«Em va commoure profundament aquesta història d’un emigrant etíop a la recerca d’acceptació, pau i identitat», ha escrit Khaled Hoss

A "beautifully written"* (New York Times Book Review) novel of redemption by a prize-winning international literary star.From the acclaimed author of The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears comes a heartbreaking literary masterwork about love, family, and the power of imagination.Following the death of his father Yosef, Jonas Woldemariam feels compelled to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, he sets out to retrace his mother and fathers honeymoon as young Ethiopian immigrants and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn country of his parents youth to a brighter vision of his life in America today. In so doing, he crafts a story- real or invented-that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the CenturyFrom acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundations 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorkers 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apartone into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

A powerful and moving summer read that explores love, grief and the reality of the contemporary American immigrant experienceJonas, fresh from a failed marriage, is desperate to make sense of the ties that have forged him. How can he dream of a future when he cant make sense of his past? He hits the road, tracing the route that his parents - young Ethiopians in search of an identity as an American couple - took thirty years earlier to Nashville, Tennessee. In a stunning display of imagination he weaves together a history that takes him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents youth to a brighter vision of his own life in contemporary America, a story - real or invented- that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.A story of exile and redemption, beautifully written The Times

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK The son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home.After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannaha 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 to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamushs stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a 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.With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions hed 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 Samuels life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of Americas most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again.Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book.

Una història d’amor tendra i commovedora. Una nova veu imprescindible en el panorama literari internacional.L’Isaac és un noi ugandès que arriba als Estats Units fugint d’una cruenta guerra a la llun

Cuenta la leyenda que en el momento de la creación, todos los seres y las cosas recibieron un nombre, y eso nos define, nos distingue frente a los demás. Tomar el nombre de otro y ponérselo como un traje prestado cambia la idea de lo que somos y hacemos. Un joven crecio en Uganda a principios de los años 70 del siglo pasado, y en la universidad de Kampala aprendio a leer a los clasicos, pero tambien a usar armas para luchar a favor de la libertad de Africa. Muy pronto la protesta se traslado a las calles de la ciudad, y los ojos de este hombre discreto, que amaba los libros, se enfrentaron al horror. Habia que huir, dejando atras una vida y un nombre. Asi fue como un buen dia aparecio Isaac en una pequeña ciudad del Medio Oeste americano como estudiante invitado, y Helen fue la trabajadora social encargada de enseñarle las costumbres del lugar. Con pocas palabras y muchas caricias los dos crearon un mundo propio, desafiando las convenciones, pero ¿quien era realmente Isaac? Una esplendida novela que habla de un amor hecho de preguntas sin respuesta, de vidas que buscan raices en la ternura y de nombres que se quedaron atras, como si un dios cruel hubiese jugado con ellos para luego olvidarlos en un rincon cualquiera de la Historia.Reseña:Una novela que te conmueve por una extraña combinacion de lirismo y ferocidad. Todos nuestros nombres es mucho mas que un libro sobre la inmigracion. Lo que esta en juego es la identidad del ser humano y todo lo que llamamos hogar.Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Una novela sobre la inmigración, el amor y la familia. Yosef y Mariam, un matrimonio de inmigrantes etíopes, emprenden un viaje por Estados Unidos en busca de una nueva oportunidad como pareja. Treinta años despues, Yosef muere y Jonas, el hijo de ambos, deja atras su trabajo y un matrimonio fallido para repetir aquel viaje. Jonas recrea asi la historia de sus padres, ansiando encontrar en el pasado las claves para vislumbrar su futuro. En su segunda novela, entrelaza diversas historias y voces con un dominio asombroso. Construye un retrato realmente poderoso de Etiopia y Estados Unidos, de la inmigracion, las relaciones familiares y el mundo de la pareja realmente poderoso.

Événement littéraire aux États-Unis, Tous nos noms est sans doute le livre le plus ambitieux de lauteur des Belles choses que porte le ciel. Roman de la maturité, où lévocation dune amitié mise à mal

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, STYLIST, AND GRANTAA BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEARHaunting . . . perfectly attuned to what it means to roam freely as an immigrant in AmericaGuardianNo book this year moved or thrilled me moreGarth 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 Mamushs 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 Samuels 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 literatureWashington PostDinaw Mengestu thinks deeply about how stories are told, especially migrant talesNew York TimesThis meticulously crafted gem is not merely read; it is experienced Steve Toltz, author of Here Goes Nothing