
Join us for an evening of drinks and conversation with award-winning novelist and PEN America Trustee, Dinaw Mengestu in celebration of his New York Times Notable Book, Someone Like Us. This evening is being generously hosted by Victoria and Ben Feder.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2024
After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.
With Hannah and their two-year-old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he’d been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel’s life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breathtaking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. Born in Ethiopia, his articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. His most recent novel, Someone Like Us, was chosen as one of President Obama’s ten best books of the year. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the founder and director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.
Please contact Renee Lamarque at [email protected] if you’re interested in attending this special evening. Donations to attend this evening are $125. Following your RSVP, you will be sent the address for the dinner. The donation is considered 100% tax-deductible and supports PEN America’s mission to defend writers and free expression at a time of unprecedented need. Your generosity is deeply appreciated.
About PEN America Authors’ Evenings
The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for our full calendar of dinners.