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![]() They all began in the same way, with the same lighthearted tone, with a small wave of the hand, as if the world were being brushed to the side…" -from The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears "The stories he invented himself he told with particular delight. His “assured prose and haunting set pieces … are heartrending and indelible” ( Publishers Weekly). ![]() Mengestu “belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and international, if sometimes forced, migrations,” writes the Los Angeles Times. “Almost every page reminds us that ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’ are deceptively decisive words” ( The New York Times). ![]() Called “a great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel” ( The New York Times Book Review), The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears alternates between the present and the past to tell the story of a lonely Ethiopian shopkeeper in a D.C. Like the protagonist of this 2007 debut novel, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Dinaw Mengestu came to the United States from Ethiopia, fleeing with his family after the Communist Revolution in 1974, which took the life of his uncle. ![]()
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