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Dinaw Mengestu Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Dinaw Mengestu
Photo: © Anne-Emmanuelle Robicquet

Dinaw Mengestu

How to pronounce Dinaw Mengestu: dih-now men-guess-too

Dinaw Mengestu Biography

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 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, The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Jane, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Prize, Guardian First Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker's 20 under 40 list in 2010.

Dinaw Mengestu's website

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Interview

Dinaw Mengestu discusses many aspects of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a haunting and powerful first novel that views the streets of Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa through the eyes of Sepha who, seventeen years ago, fled Ethiopia during the Revolution and now runs a failing convenience store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington.

How much of your own story and your family’s story is in this novel? How did you learn about your family’s experience?

The novel is definitely a blend of fact and fiction. The parts of the narrative that are true were told to me over the course of many years, sometimes by accident, sometimes deliberately. As is often the case with fiction, a certain factual detail becomes the starting point from which the rest of the narrative takes off. My uncle, for example, was a lawyer in Addis, and he was arrested and died during the government’s Red Terror campaign. The details of his death, however, are entirely unknown to me or anyone else in my family. Similarly, another uncle who was a teenager at the time did flee Ethiopia for Sudan during the Revolution, and while we’ve discussed his journey, it’s always in relatively vague and general terms, and that’s partly where the fiction element comes. It allows you to create the details that can bring a story to life.


Why do you think that the lives of African immigrants in the United States have been so little explored in fiction until now?


There have clearly been dozens of wonderful novels written by Africans about Africa. ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Dinaw Mengestu at BookBrowse
Someone Like Us jacket All Our Names jacket How to Read the Air jacket The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Dinaw Mengestu but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Someone Like Us

    Try:
    Americanah
    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Bisi Adjapon

    Bisi Adjapon

    Bisi Adjapon is the author of The Teller of Secrets (first published as Of Women and Frogs), A Washington Post, Essence, ALA, Boston Globe, Ms Magazine's top 20 novel in November 2021. Her second novel, Daughter in Exile, was... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Someone Like Us

    Try:
    Daughter in Exile
    by Bisi Adjapon

We recommend 28 similar authors


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