Dinaw Mengestu, March 25
A young man coming of age during an African revolution leaves behind his country and friends for America, where he pretends to be an exchange student, falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet he can't escape the secrets of his past, the acts he committed and the charismatic leader who led him to revolution and sacrificed all. "All Our Names" is about identity, about the names we are given and the names we earn. MacArthur fellow Dinaw Mengestu is the author of two previous novels, "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" (2008 Seattle Reads selection) and "How to Read the Air." A graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction, he was the recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award and a New Yorker 20 Under 40 award. His journalism and fiction have appeared in Harper\u2019s Magazine, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal.