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How to Read the Air

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How to Read the Air

Written by: Dinaw Mengestu
Narrated by: Corey Allen
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About this listen

African-born author Dinaw Mengestu’s prose is praised as “heart-rending and indelible” (Publishers Weekly), and his debut novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was a New York Times Notable Book. In How to Read the Air, Mengestu crafts a moving tale about one man’s search for identity.

After his estranged Ethiopian immigrant father dies, Jonas hopes to answer questions about his heritage and culture. So he leaves his wife and home in New York and sets out across the trail his own parents took when they first arrived in America.

©2010 Dinaw Mengestu (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction World Literature Heartfelt
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What the critics say

"[R]ichly imagined. ... He's pulled off a narrative sleight of hand, weaving two--or is it three? -- beautiful fictions, while reminding us subtly that the most seductive may be the least true." (Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times)
"By the end, How to Read the Air grows into a tragic and affecting paradox, a demonstration of the limits of fiction, the inability of stories to heal or preserve. And yet there it is, this novel--wholly contrived--offering up its wisdom about the immigrant experience with the kind of power mere facts couldn't convey." (Ron Charles, Washington Post)
"[D]eeply thought out, deliberate in its craftsmanship and in many parts beautifully written. ... At times Mengestu doesn't seem to trust his reader to get his point, while the momentum of poetic prose, of a well-turned phrase or astute observation, often continues two clicks too long, detracting from the narrative's velocity." (Miguel Syjuco, New York Times Book Review)

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