Audiobook8 hours
All Our Names
Written by Dinaw Mengestu
Narrated by Saskia Maarleveld and Korey Jackson
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
From Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35 Award, the New Yorker's 20 under 40 Award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes a novel about exile, about the loneliness and fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is the story of a young man who comes of age during an African revolution, drawn from the hushed halls of his university into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, and the path of revolution leads to almost certain destruction, he leaves behind his country and friends for America. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into the routines of 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 charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom. Subtle, intelligent, and quietly devastating, All Our Names is a novel about identity, about the names we are given and the names we earn. The emotional power of Mengestu's work is indelible.
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Reviews for All Our Names
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A lot of books play with alternating points of view. Mengestu’s take is deceptively simple, but, because of the use of names (the title’s not just for show), the alternating structure ended up being profoundly affecting to me in ways I would never have expected.