Los Angeles Times Book Review: Dinaw Mengestu belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and intentional, if sometimes forced, migrations. These are the writer-immigrants coming here from Africa, East India, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Their struggles for identity mark a new turn within the ranks of American writers I like to call ‘the in-betweeners.’ The most interesting work in American literature has often been done by such writers, their liminality and luminosity in American culture produced by changing national definitions (Twain, Kerouac, Ginsberg), by being the children of immigrants themselves (Bellow, Singer), by voluntary exile (Baldwin, Hemingway) and by trauma (Bambara, Morrison).
Dinaw Mengestu was born in Ethiopia in 1978 and is a graduate of Georgetown and Columbia universities. He works as a journalist and reviewer and is researching a book tracing his extended family’s exile from Ethiopia following the 1974 revolution. Children of the Revolution won the Guardian First Book Award in 2007… Continue reading >>
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Five month ago I was in Paris for business and came across to Dinaw MENGESTU’S book translated in French:” LES BELLES CHOSES QUE PORTE LE CIEL” in American, “THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS.” The French book critics consider Dinaw the 28 years old Ethiopian as genius and the sensation of the moment.
Dinaw’s book is one of the most powerful novels I ever read in my life. I am a great fun of Chester Himes but found a lot of similarities between Dinaw and James Baldwin.
Both are abnormally intelligent.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Yes, the book has been a hit in France.
As Woody Alen said once, "Thanks God, the french exists".
May 14th, 2008 at 8:48 am