BOOKS FROM ETHIOPIAAll Our Names
Tags:
Male author
Coming of age
Description:
In Uganda, two young men get caught up in a revolt against the post-colonial regime in the early 1970s. As the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart - one of them into the deepest peril. In a quiet town in the American Midwest, an exotic stranger arrives: an exchange student from Africa called Isaac. Helen, the social worker asked to help him settle in, quickly falls for him, though she soon learns to keep their affair hidden from prejudiced eyes. And she soon realises that Isaac is haunted by his mysterious past. Switching back and forth between Africa and America, this taut, searing novel blazes with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives.
Reviews:
(1 month ago) |
19 Aug, 2025
Sad, bleak and austere, with descriptions so spare they don’t seem to describe real people or real relationships. Deliberately full of concealment and erasure (“You have nothing to worry about. No one has any idea who you are”) but this also makes it seem superficial and implausible.
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