DOHA: Author Dinaw Mengestu, a rising star of African literature, will today discuss his latest critically acclaimed fictional novel at a public book reading on Georgetown University’s Education City campus at 6pm.
The novel All Our Names explores the friendship of two young African men caught between the political turmoil of 1970s in Uganda and racial prejudices of a post-Vietnam war America.
All Our Names has received glowing praise since its publication earlier this year. The New York Times has described it as “straightforward but at the same time so mysterious that you can’t turn the pages fast enough, and when you’re done, your first impulse is to go back to the beginning and start over”.
Frieda Wiebe, Director, Georgetown Library, said, “The library offers a wonderful public space to engage the Doha community with writers, thinkers, and leaders from around the globe. It is an absolute privilege to have an author of Dinaw Mengestu’s stature discussing his latest novel with students and the community at Georgetown.”
Mengestu is a 2000 graduate of Georgetown University’s Washington, DC campus where he teaches in the English Department as the Lannan Chair of Poetics.
He welcomed the opportunity to share his novel with readers in Qatar and said, “It is through literature that we learn to find the common threads of our shared humanity. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss my work, and I hope the works of the many great writers from the Middle East, with the vibrant community in Doha.”
He is also the author of two critically-acclaimed novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2008) and How to Read the Air (2010).
He is also a 2012 recipient of MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius grant’ which is given annually to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.
The free and open to the public book reading will be held at the Georgetown Building and those wishing to attend can register at the university’s website. THE PENINSULA
