Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

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

This bio was last updated on 07/16/2024. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

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. ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

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
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

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


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: My Friends
    My Friends
    by Hisham Matar
    The title of Hisham Matar's My Friends takes on affectionate but mournful tones as its story unfolds...
  • Book Jacket: James
    James
    by Percival Everett
    The Oscar-nominated film American Fiction (2023) and the Percival Everett novel it was based on, ...
  • Book Jacket
    But the Girl
    by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
    Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl begins with the real-life disappearance of Malaysia Airlines ...
  • Book Jacket: Patriot
    Patriot
    by Alexei Navalny
    On the 17th of January, 2024, colleagues of Alexei Navalny posted a message to his Instagram account...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.