As they do in life, unanswered questions nag in Dinaw Mengestu’s new novel, “ Someone Like Us. ” That is what sets a man on a cross-country trip to understand his father’s past and, ultimately, his own. This is the Ethiopian-American novelist’s fourth novel.
His articles and fiction have been published by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and others. He was a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 in 2007. He teaches at Bard College.
BOOKS: What have you been reading? MENGESTU: I’m reading “ Hangman ,” a new novel by a young writer, Maya Binyam. I’m deeply impressed by its quiet humor. I’ve also been working my way through the novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 Nobel Prize winner.
I’m just finishing “ By the Sea, ” which is extraordinary, and before that I read “ Afterlives .” Advertisement BOOKS: Do you make a point of reading prize winners? MENGESTU: Most of the time I’m already familiar with works that win prizes. I wasn’t with Gurnah’s.
Then Riverhead reissued some of his books recently. I wanted to read “By the Sea” when it came out but I had to wait until the semester ended. During the school year, I spend a lot of time rereading books I teach but there’s a lot of joy in rereading.
BOOKS: Are there books you especially enjoy rereading to teach? MENGESTU: I’ve taught Camus’s “ The Stranger ” several times. Each time I get a little closer to understanding all of the layers that are quietly embedded in the novel. “ Exterminate All the Brutes ” by the Swedish writer and philosopher Sven Lindqvist is a strange book that I teach regularly as an excuse to reread it.
It’s a hybrid of travelogue and intellectual history that traces the idea of extermination, beginning in the Enlightenment and then works its way through colonialism to the Holocaust. My students love it. BOOKS: Are there novels that you love that have fallen flat with your students? MENGESTU: Many times.
V.S. Naipaul’s “ A Bend in the River ” is a phenomenal book, but it’s hard to teach because the narrator is a very difficult person.
Marilynne Robinson’s “ Housekeeping ,” which I love, can backfire. The religious imagery doesn’t resonate for some students. Advertisement BOOKS: What kind of reader were you as a young man? MENGESTU: I liked reading better than anything else.
I would go to the library’s used book sale, buy bags of books, and burn through them. In college, I worked at the library and read anything that randomly appealed to me. I could do that, partly, because you have the time when you are young.
Now there’s less room for wild reading. My reading time is precious now versus when I had three weeks to figure out if I liked Joyce’s “ Ulysses .” BOOKS: How do you find the books you read? MENGESTU: I will sit on a jury because it gives me an opportunity to read books I haven’t.
Doing the National Book Award for translation in 2020 was just a joy. One of the best reasons to do that is they give you 100 books to read and talk about. BOOKS: Who were some of the writers you discovered doing that? MENGESTU: There was a writer I was familiar with, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, who wrote “ The Family Clause ,” but who I came to love even more.
Adania Shibli’s “ Minor Detail ” and Fernanda Melchor’s “ Hurricane Season ” were also on that list, and Yu Miri’s “ Tokyo Ueno Station ” won the award. We translate so few books in the US. The bar is so arbitrary and difficult that the books that do get translated are exceptional.
BOOKS: How did you manage to read that many books? MENGESTU : That was during COVID. There was not a lot happening, especially that summer. The weather was beautiful.
We were upstate. There was a lot of outdoor reading. That felt like going back in time.
Advertisement BOOKS: Do you like reading outside? MENGESTU: Yeah, I do it whenever I can. In college I would sit under a tree reading and miss classes. To some degree I recreate that in the summer but I don’t miss a class.
Now I’m the one who teaches the class. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter @GlobeBiblio. Amy Sutherland is the author, most recently, of “ Rescuing Penny Jane ” and she can be reached at amysutherland@mac.
com ..
