This year the Arroyo Book Club will once again be participating in NEA’s Big Read program. This year the book we will be reading is The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. Let’s turn to what the NEA has to say about this book:
Like the protagonist of this 2007 debut novel, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Dinaw Mengestu came to the United States from Ethiopia, fleeing with his family after the Communist Revolution in 1974, which took the life of his uncle. Called “a great African novel, a great Washington novel and a great American novel” (The New York Times Book Review), The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears alternates between the present and the past to tell the story of a lonely Ethiopian shopkeeper in a D.C. neighborhood undergoing gentrification. “Almost every page reminds us that ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’ are deceptively decisive words” (The New York Times). Mengestu “belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and international, if sometimes forced, migrations,” writes the Los Angeles Times. His “assured prose and haunting set pieces … are heartrending and indelible” (Publishers Weekly).Visit the NEA’s webpage about this book to find background information about the book and its author as well as discussion questions and related activities. The web page in question is here: https://www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read/the-beautiful-things-that-heaven-bears
As always a copy of the book will be yours to keep (while supplies last) so stop by the information desk to pick up the book and make plans to join us for discussion on March 23 at 3:00.
