All Our Names - Softcover

Mengestu, Dinaw

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385679793 ISBN 13: 9780385679794

Publisher: Anchor Canada, 2015

Synopsis

"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 this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2014: 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 social worker, who, for all her heart and intelligence, has trouble understanding him. Part illusion, part product of the revolutionary past in his own country, Isaac purposely makes himself unknowable. Who is Isaac (nicknamed “Dickens” by some, for his love of the writer) now? And who was he as a student in Ethiopia? Do names and times even matter? Sometimes lyrical, sometimes plaintive--“He’s the closest thing I have to a past in this country,” Isaac explains to Helen about a friend from home--Mengestu’s novel is about a young man coming to terms with his past and trying to determine his future. But it’s also a searing, universal story of emigration and identity. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

DINAW MENGESTU is the award-winning author of two novels, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2008) and How To Read the Air (2010). He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Columbia University's MFA program in fiction and the recipient of a 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation and a 20 Under 40 Award from The New Yorker. His journalism and fiction have appeared in such publications as Harper's, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant and currently lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Canada
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0385679793
• ISBN 13: 9780385679794
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272