Someone Like Us
'No book this year moved or thrilled me more' - Garth Greenwell
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, STYLIST, AND GRANTA
A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Haunting . . . perfectly attuned to what it means to roam freely as an immigrant in America'
Guardian
'No book this year moved or thrilled me more'
Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain
A heartbreaking novel about loss, family and exile, from the winner of the Guardian First Book Award
After abandoning his once promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Helen - a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love, but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage on the verge of collapse, he leaves his young family and returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington DC that defined his childhood.
At its center is Mamush's stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father-figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.
What follows is an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions Mamush has been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel's life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them.
'It was obvious from the start that Dinaw Mengestu was adding something extraordinary to American literature'
Washington Post
'Dinaw Mengestu thinks deeply about how stories are told, especially migrant tales'
New York Times
'This meticulously crafted gem is not merely read; it is experienced '
Steve Toltz, author of Here Goes Nothing
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the beautiful latest from Mengestu (All Our Names), a journalist pieces together the mysteries of his early life in the wake of his biological father's death. The story takes place over three days after Mamush travels from Paris to the Ethiopian community outside Washington, D.C., where he spent the latter half of his childhood. Upon his arrival, he learns from his mother that Samuel, whom Mamush knew growing up as a family friend and later found out was his father, has just been found dead in his garage. The circumstances of Samuel's death are murky and people are careful about making assumptions, partly due to the taboo nature of suicide in Ethiopian culture. After Mamush pays condolences to Samuel's wife, he heads to Chicago, where he was born shortly after his mother emigrated from Ethiopia, hoping to find answers about Samuel and his mother's early relationship. Mamush knows Samuel arrived in Chicago when Mamush was six, with plans to start a network of taxis around the U.S., but instead toiled as a cabbie and became addicted to drugs. From there, the story unfolds like a fairy tale as Mamush imagines the ghost of Samuel telling him how he met Mamush's mother and why they were never together in the U.S. Mengestu shifts fluidly between fabulism and realism, and the narrative is full of wisdom related to Samuel's disillusionment with the American dream. Mengestu's tremendous talents are on full display.
