NL Book Group Selection

The New Lebanon Book Group has selected The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu for its upcoming discussions on Sunday, June 7, at 11 am at Hitchcock House, Route #22, New Lebanon, and on Thursday, June 25, at 7 pm at the New Lebanon Library, 550 Route #20, New Lebanon.
The novel tells the story of Sepha Stephanos who, seventeen years ago, fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. When a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything again.
A New York Times Notable Book and praised by its Book Review as a “great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel,” The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was the winner of the 2007 Guardian First Book Award and received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.
Author Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980, he came to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled the communist revolution in Ethiopia two years before. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is his first novel.