March 2, 2007

Just Like Heaven

“The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,” by Dinaw Mengestu

In Washington, it seems everyone’s from somewhere else. Believe it or not, they don’t all end up on the Hill or at The World Bank.

Dinaw Mengestu shows another side of the city’s emigrés in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, his witty and poignant debut novel about the African immigrant experience.

Sepha Stephanos, a thirtysomething Ethiopian who came to D.C. to flee a communist revolution, owns a run-down grocery store in Logan Circle. His only friends are two other African immigrants with whom he goes out drinking once a week.

Sepha’s lonely life begins to change with the arrival of Judith, a white woman who’s renovating her neighborhood townhouse, and her half-black daughter, the precocious 11-year-old Naomi.

But their relationship is disrupted when local gentrification sparks a series of racial incidents — and Sepha is forced to reckon with his past, his future, and his identity as an American.

Universal themes, no matter where you’re from.

Available online at amazon.com or your local bookstore.