Dinaw Mengestu was born in Ethiopia in 1978 and is a graduate of Georgetown and Columbia universities. He works as a journalist and reviewer and is researching a book tracing his extended family's exile from Ethiopia following the 1974 revolution. Children of the Revolution won the Guardian First Book Award in 2007.
A quietly accomplished debut novel... Despite, or perhaps because of, the attritions of his years in exile, Sepha has remained astonishingly tender. In the end, it is this human warmth that triumphs Guardian Brilliant... a courageous and engaging novel Daily Telegraph With faultless pitch and tone, this elegiac first novel packs great matters into its modest span Independent A quietly brilliant portrait of immigrant life... Children of the Revolution reads like an Ethopian variation on The Great Gatsby. Remarkably it's not diminished by this comparison Financial Times A rich and lyrical story of displacement and loneliness. I was profoundly moved by this tale of an Ethiopian immigrant's search for acceptance, peace, and identity... Mengestu makes us feel this tortured soul's longings, regrets, and in the end, his dreams of meaningful human connection -- Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner