The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
by Dinaw Mengestu
An Ethiopian refugee. A DC corner store. Change.
For you if
you want to understand the immigrant experience as something that happens in the body long after the journey is over
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
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Sepha Stephanos fled Ethiopia's Derg regime and ended up running a small grocery in a gentrifying Washington DC neighborhood. He drinks with his two African immigrant friends — a Congolese man, a Kenyan man — and they play a game: name the African dictator, name the coup, name the year. The novel is quiet and devastating. A dispatch from inside the specific grief of the exile who survived but can't fully arrive, set against the backdrop of a neighborhood being erased by the same economic forces that displaced him.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Ethiopia • East Africa
- Voice
- Written by a Ethiopian author
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
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For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
