In Someone Like Us, by Dinaw Mengestu, the son of Ethiopian immigrants seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home.
After abandoning a promising career as a journalist to search for a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah, a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Five years later, with his marriage on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood and sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he’d been told never to ask. This is a breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names, How to Read the Air, and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and more. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of numerous awards, including a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Prize.
