All Our Names

"All Our Names" by Dinaw Mengestu, published by Sceptre Books. From Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award, the New Yorker's 20 Under 40 Award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant comes a novel about exile, about the loneliness and fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. ''Weighted with sorrow and gravitas, another superb story by Mengestu, who is among the best novelists now at work in America.'' - Kirkus ReviewsAll 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.''Mengestu, who seems to have been born knowing how to play with time in a novel... manages to make race and questions of racial identity the unifying threads tying these two very different love stories together... It is a story about finding out who you are, about how much of you is formed by your family and your homeland, and what happens when those things go up in smoke... The victories in this beautiful novel are hard-fought and hard-won, but won they are, and they are durable.'' - The New York TimesSubtle, 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 Dinaw Mengestu's work is indelible. Book details: 272 pages, published 2014. Order now on BookShops.in with fast, reliable delivery across India.