Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book.
Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death, selling off his parents' jewelry to pay for passage to the United States. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of frustration with and bitter nostalgia for their home continent. He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago.
Soon Sepha's neighborhood begins to change. Hope comes in the form of new neighbors-Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter-who become his friends and remind him of what having a family is like for the first time in years. But when the neighborhood's newfound calm is disturbed by a series of racial incidents, Sepha may lose everything all over again.
Told in a haunting and powerful first-person narration that casts the streets of Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa through Sepha's eyes, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a deeply affecting and unforgettable debut novel about what it means to lose a family and a country-and what it takes to create a new home.
"Mengestu has told a rich and lyrical story of displacement and loneliness. I was profoundly moved by this tale of an Ethiopian immigrant’s search for acceptance, peace, and identity. Some of the passages in Ethiopia are heartbreaking and almost unbearably painful. With effortless prose, Mengestu makes us feel this tortured soul’s longings, regrets, and in the end, his dreams of meaningful human connection."
—Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
“A startling, necessary novel. Dinaw Mengestu's vision of America is clear and precise, opening our eyes to the country we inhabit, for better and for worse.”
—Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook
"The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is unlike any other novel I've ever read - I was captured from the first page, with this wry, melancholic and very funny trio of immigrant friends who have made their own small place in this world. Stephanos, with his voice of hope and memory and survival, is a marvelous creation, and his attempts at love and salvation are rendered with exquisite care and humor by Dinaw Mengestu, a shining entry into the literary world."
—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales and Highwire Moon
“This is a wonderful novel. It is not only the story of an Ethiopian immigrant living in Washington, D.C.—it is also, in the end, the story of this country, of the dreamers who continue to dream it despite the unfolding, unforgiving American nightmare. Dinaw Mengestu is a marvelous, abundantly talented writer.”
—Rattawut Lapcharoensap, author of Sightseeing
“In Mengestu’s work, there’s no such thing as the nondescript life. He notices, and there are whole worlds in his noticing. He has written a novel for an age ravaged by the moral and military fallout of cross-cultural incuriosity. In a society slick with “truthiness”—and Washington may be the capital of that—there’s something hugely hopeful about this young writer’s watchful honesty and egalitarian tenderness. This a great African novel, a great Washington novel, and a great American novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
"[W]renching and important...Seldom has a character emerged in a recent novel who is so compellingly dark but honest, hopeful but dismal, and able to turn his chronicle into a truly American tapestry...Mengestu has made, and made well, a novel that is a retelling of the immigrant experience." —Chris Abani, Los Angeles Times
“A graceful first novel…wry and tender…One needn’t have been displaced to feel the contrast between inner and social life as insufferably sharp. In quiet, elegant tones, Mengestu achieves the uncommon feat of conveying the profound devastation of arbitrarily broken lives while illuminating the quotidian fractures in our own.” —Tara Gallagher, The Nation
“[P]raiseworthy…With its well-observed characters and brisk narrative pacing, greatly benefited by the characters' tension-laced wit, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is an assured literary debut by a writer worth watching. —The Washington Post Book World
"A tender, thoughtful novel." —Francine Prose, People
"[A] tender, enthralling debut novel about the hidden lives of immigrants who are caught between the brutal Africa they have fled and an America that will not full admit them...Mengestu brilliantly illuminates both the trauma of exile and the ways in which so many of us are still looking for home in America." —Richard McCann, O, The Oprah Magazine
"This searing novel... [is a] study of expatriate lonliness and urban despair." —The New Yorker
“Mengestu—who was born in Ethiopia in 1978, during Mengistu Haile Mariam's Red Terror, and whose family immigrated to the United States two years later — weaves families out of nothing. This is his particular magic...Simply describing a table, with three chairs, three friends and a map of Africa, Mengestu creates a sense of home and belonging." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
"[H]aunting and powerful...a deeply felt novel that deserves to be read." —The San Francisco Chronicle
"[E]loquent...The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is not a conventional immigrant novel, and Stephanos is not a garden-variety emigre...deeply moving." —Chicago Tribune
"This is not a story for only an immigrant audience. The author, Dinaw Mengestu, writes in a way that makes this a universal story. In doing so, he does what the best writers accomplish." —The Oregonian
"This first novel, by an Ethiopian-American, sings of the immigrant experience, an old American story that people renew every generation, but it sings in an existential key...His straightforward language and his low-key voice combine to make a compelling narrative, one that loops back in time yet seems to move forward with an even pace." —Alan Cheuse, Dallas Morning News
“[W]onderfully written and moving.” —Esquire
“Mengestu delves into the modern-day immigrant experience…[His] characters are artfully crafted, original and complex in their humanity. Mengestu wants us to know them, to hear their story, and he succeeds in giving us a novel that is fresh and new.” —The Miami Herald
“Graceful…[An] understated first novel.” —Entertainment Weekly
“[A] fine first novel.” —Washington City Paper
“Barely suppressed despair and black wit infuse this beautifully observed debut from Ethiopian émigré Mengestu...Mengestu's assured prose and haunting set pieces are heart-rending and indelible.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Mengestu skirts immigrant-literature clichés and paints a beautiful portrait of a complex, conflicted man struggling with questions of love and loyalty... A nuanced slice of immigrant life.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A poignant story providing food for thought.” —Library Journal
