How to Read the Air

Author(s): Dinaw Mengestu

General Fiction

Dinaw Mengestu's first novel, "Children of the Revolution", earned him comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald and Naipaul, garnered ecstatic critical praise and won the "Guardian" First Book Award for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience in America. Now, he enriches the themes that defined his debut in a story that captures two generations of an immigrant family. One early September afternoon, Yosef and Mariam, young Ethiopians who have spent all but their first year of marriage apart, set off on a road trip from their new home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of an identity as an American couple. Thirty years later, Yosef has died, and the couple's son, Jonas, is desperate to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. How can he envision his future without knowing what has come before? Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas sets out to retrace his parents' trip and, in a stunning display of imagination, weaves together a family history that takes him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to a brighter vision of his own life in contemporary America, a story - real or invented - that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption. A heartbreaking masterwork about love, family and the power of imagination, "How to Read the Air" confirms Dinaw Mengestu's reputation as one of the brightest talents of his generation.

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Product Information

The eagerly anticipated follow-up from the acclaimed author of Children of the Revolution, winner of the 2007 Guardian First Book Award.

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Ethiopia in 1978 and is a graduate of Georgetown and Columbia universities. His 2007 debut novel, Children of the Revolution, won the Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2010, he was included in the New Yorker's '20 Under 40' list of writers to watch.

General Fields

  • : 9780099521037
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Vintage
  • : 0.247
  • : December 2011
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : January 2012
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Dinaw Mengestu
  • : Paperback
  • : 813.6
  • : 336