Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu has spent most of his life in America, straddling between Ethiopian and American identities. It's this personal journey between Addis Ababa and Peoria, Illinois that gi...

Dinaw Mengestu talks about his latest novel, All Our Names. It’s the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university into the clamor of the streets. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into danger, the other into the safety of exile in America, where he is haunted by the friend he left behind.

As part of our week-long series, we speak with two immigrant writers whose parents were forced to flee their homelands because of political unrest, and came to rest in America. Both live outside the U.S. now, and both say their notion of "home" has become ... portable.

Find out some of Dinaw Mengestu's favorite picks!

Dinaw Mengestu, who has been compared to Bellow, Fitzgerald, and Naipaul, discusses his novel, How to Read the Air. It tells the story of Ethiopian immigrants in search of a new identity as an American couple, and their son’s challenges with generational and cultural differences.