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Dinaw Mengestu
reads from
All Our Names:
A Novel
This event includes a book signing
DateApr
7
Monday
April 7, 2014 7:00 PM ET |
LocationHarvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 |
Tickets
This event is free; no tickets are required.
|
Harvard Book Store welcomes DINAW MENGESTU, recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, for a reading from his novel All Our Names.
All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into 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 beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.
“An elegiac love story . . . Split across two narratives—one in the past, one in the present—All Our Namesdramatizes the clashes between romantic idealism and disillusioned practicality, as well as between self-preservation and violence, all while blurring the identities of those who can move on, those who stay behind, and those who simply change.” —The Millions, “Most Anticipated: The Great 2014 Book Preview”
“Mengestu portrays the intersection of cultures experienced by the immigrant with unsettling perception . . . He evokes contrasting landscapes but focuses on his characters—Isaac, the saddened visionary; Isaac, the secretive refugee; Helen, the sympathetic lover—who are all caught in a cycle of connection and disruption, engagement and abandonment, hope and disillusion.” —Publishers Weekly
Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes
As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.
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