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LONGLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015
Two young friends join an uprising against Uganda’s corrupt regime in the early 1970s. As the line blurs between idealism and violence, one of them flees for his life.
In a quiet Midwestern town in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, an African student falls for the woman who helps him settle in. Prejudice overshadows their relationship, yet it is equally haunted by the past.
Both men are called Isaac. But are they one and the same?
Two young friends join an uprising against Uganda’s corrupt regime in the early 1970s. As the line blurs between idealism and violence, one of them flees for his life.
In a quiet Midwestern town in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, an African student falls for the woman who helps him settle in. Prejudice overshadows their relationship, yet it is equally haunted by the past.
Both men are called Isaac. But are they one and the same?
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Reviews
A tale about human universals, in this case the universal longing for justice and our seemingly universal inability to achieve it without becoming unjust ourselves . . . Weighted with sorrow and gravitas, another superb story by Mengestu, who is among the best novelists now at work in America.
Deeply moving . . . Mengestu addresses, with great lyricism and ferocity, the same themes of exile and loss that animated his two earlier novels . . . he is concerned here not only with the dislocations experienced by immigrants, but also with broader questions of identity: how individuals define themselves by their dreams, their choices, the place or places they call home.
A story so 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 . . . The victories in this beautiful novel are hard fought and hard won, but won they are, and they are durable.
Mengestu's most impressive examination yet of the African diaspora . . . Worlds on a cusp, powerfully drawn: notable above all is Mengestu's desperately moving portrait of a compromised friendship.
Elegiac and beautifully written . . . Mengestu skilfully locates this individual love story in the long shadow cast by the rise of dictatorial regimes across Africa in the turbulent decades that followed the end of imperial rule.
What's fascinating about All Our Names is the unsettling way it engages with history - both the history of Uganda and literary history . . . Mengestu is rapidly becoming a writer on the global stage.