Author Dinaw Mengestu, a rising star of African literature, will discuss his latest critically acclaimed fictional novel on the school’s Education City campus at a public book reading today.

The novel, All Our Names, explores the friendship of two young African men caught between the political turmoil of 1970s’ Uganda and the racial prejudices of a post-Vietnam War America.

All Our Names has received glowing praise since being published earlier this year. The New York Times describes 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 of the Georgetown Library, said about the book reading: “This 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 here at Georgetown.”

Mengestu is a 2000 graduate of Georgetown University’s Washington, DC campus where he currently teaches in the English department as the Lannan Chair of Poetics. He welcomed the opportunity to share his novel to readers in Qatar, saying: “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 work of the many great writers from the Middle East, with the vibrant community in Doha.”

He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels – The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2008), How to Read the Air (2010) and All Our Names (2014). He is also a 2012 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”, given yearly by the MacArthur Foundation “to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual and professional inclinations”.

The free and open-to-public book reading will be held at the Georgetown Building at 6pm and those wishing to attend can register on the university’s website.

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