Dinaw Mengestu
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears: A Novel
Dinaw Mengestu
Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood. His only companions are two fellow African immigrants who share his feelings of frustration. He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago.
Hope comes in the form of new neighbors-Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter-who remind him of what having a family is like. But when the neighborhood’s newfound calm is disturbed by a series of racial incidents, Sepha may lose everything all over again.
Told in a haunting and powerful first-person narration, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a deeply affecting and unforgettable debut novel about what it means to lose a family and a country-and what it takes to create a new home.
