Children of the Revolution - Tapa blanda

an impressive moving debut (The Spectator The Spectator)

Mengestu has told a rich and lyrical story of displacement and loneliness. I was profoundly moved by this tale of an Ethiopian immigrant's search for acceptance, peace, and identity. Some of the passages in Ethiopia are heartbreaking and almost unbearably painful. With effortless prose, Mengestu makes us feel this tortured soul's longings, regrets, and in the end, his dreams of meaningful human connection.-- (Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner)

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). (Los Angeles Times Book Review 2007-03-10)

a quietly brilliant portrait of immigrant life...It reads like an Ethopian variation on The Great Gatsby. Remarkably it's not diminished by this comparison. (Financial Times Financial Times)

a quietly accomplished debut novel... he bestows an immense dignity, never sentimentalising their plight. Despite, or perhaps because of, the attritions of his years in exile, Sepha has remained astonishingly tender. Although occasionally despairing, he has not yet lost the ability to love. In the end, it is this human warmth that triumphs... (Guardian Guardian)