Borders
2817 N Clark St
773.935.3909
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Dinaw Mengestu: How to Read the Air
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Tuesday Oct 26, 2010 (7pm)
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“Like his celebrated debut, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu's strong sophomore novel, How to Read the Air, traffics along the familiar road of immigrant estrangement. Ehtiopian American Jonas Woldemariam sets off on a road trip to make sense of his parents' troubled marriage and, through it, the recent collapse of his own. But the novel's major theme — how fabricated details both empower and distract important collective storytelling — is quite powerful. As a refugee center worker, Jonas exaggerates asylum seekers' claims and, as a teacher to "privileged freshmen," freely "makes up the missing details" of his father's plight — all in service to a greater good. Try the excerpt, "An Honest Exit," printed in July by the New Yorker, which named Mengestu one of their 20 Under 40.
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Stephen Gossett, Flavorpill
Dinaw Mengestu's first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, earned the young writer comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald, and Naipaul, and garnered ecstatic critical praise and awards around the world for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience. Now Mengestu enriches the themes that defined his debut with a heartbreaking literary masterwork about love, family, and the power of imagination, which confirms his reputation as one of the brightest talents of his generation.
-Borders
