All Our Names Paperback by Dinaw Mengestu

Product Details

• Publisher: Anchor Canada (2015-01-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780385679794
• Item Weight: 267.62 grams
• Dimensions: 7.94 x 5.14 x 0.82 cm

"A fierce and tender examination of identity, love, disillusionment, friendship and sacrifice. . . . Extraordinary." —National Post

All Our Names is the story of a young man who comes of age during an African revolution, drawn from the hushed halls of his university into the intensifying clamour of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, and the path of revolution leads to almost certain destruction, he leaves behind his country and friends for America.

There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into the routines of 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 charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.

Subtle, intelligent, and quietly devastating, All Our Names is a novel about identity, about the names we are given and the names we earn. The emotional power of Mengestu's work is indelible.

About the Author

DINAW MENGESTU is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names, How To Read the Air, and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Jane and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s "20 under 40" list in 2010.