All Our Names

Dinaw Mengestu left his native Ethiopia when he was just a toddler, but he still experienced America as an immigrant, and that challenge continues to shape his fiction. Raised in suburban Chicago, he began his career in Washington with a novel set around Logan Circle called “The Beautiful Things Tha......more

I found this book to be strangely vague and lacking in specificity for my taste. The characters are so broadly drawn to be unknowable, and the settings seem somewhat unreal - Kampala at a vague point in the past, and the Midwest also at some vague point in the past. The relationship between the narr......more

Idealism, disillusionment, justice and love--these are the topics beautifully explored in this novel by the MacArthur “Genius” grantee and author of How to Read the Air. A young African man called Isaac has come to the Midwestern United States, where he embarks on a relationship with Helen, a socia......more

This is a story told in alternating chapters: one in the 1960’s Africa (Isaac) and one in the 1970’s in Midwestern America (Helen). It’s a story of two countries revolutions: African’s independence and the USA’s Civil Rights Movement. At that time, neither country was particularly “safe” for black p......more

A story narrated in alternate chapters, one entitled Isaac, the other Helen. Isaac takes place during a short perios in the life of the male protagonist after he as left the family village somewhere in Ethiopia, planning never to return, arriving in Kampala, a city in Uganda where he hopes to study......more