Published by Vintage, part of Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback
£7.99
Author:
Dinaw Mengestu
Format: Paperback
EAN: 9780099521037
£7.99
Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days
EAN: 9780099521037
Published: 5 Jan 2012
Jonas, fresh from a failed marriage, is desperate to make sense of the ties that have forged him. How can he dream of a future when he can't make sense of his past? He hits the road, tracing the route that his parents - young Ethiopians in search of an identity as an American couple - took thirty year earlier to Nashville, Tennessee.
In a stunning display of imagination he weaves together a 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.
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A straight-forward, compassionate, keenly sensitive observer of real life
- Guardian
A story of exile and redemption, beautifully written
- The Times
[Mengestu has] pulled off a narrative sleight of hand, weaving two - or is it three? - beautiful fictions, while reminding us subtly that the most seductive may be the least true
- Los Angeles Times
How To Read the Air is deeply thought out, deliberate in its craftsmanship and in many parts beautifully written...remarkably talented
- The Scotsman
Challenging
- Independent
Mengestu's finely written novel, his second, tackles family, the break-up of a marriage and the reinvention of a past... Finely written novel
- Sunday Times
It is a measure of the novel's ultimate success that the narrative has real drive, and also reminds us that fiction really does matter
- Sunday Times, Culture
There's no denying its emotional heft
- Sunday Business Post
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.
