Description

Seventeen years after fleeing the revolutionary Ethiopia that claimed his father’s life, Sepha Stephanos is a man still caught between two existences: the one he left behind, aged nineteen, and the new life he has forged in Washington D.C. Sepha spends his days in a sort of limbo: quietly running his grocery store into the ground, revisiting the Russian classics, and toasting the old days with his friends Kenneth and Joseph, themselves emigrants from Africa.

But when a white woman named Judith moves next door with her only daughter, Naomi, Sepha’s life seems on the verge of change…

Publisher Review

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 * 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 * With faultless pitch and tone, this elegiac first novel packs great matters into its modest span * Independent * Brilliant... a courageous and engaging novel * Daily Telegraph * 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 *