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

Brilliant... a courageous and engaging novel

With faultless pitch and tone, this elegiac first novel packs great matters into its modest span

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

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

Dinaw Mengestu belongs to that special group of American voices produced by global upheavals and intentional, if sometimes forced, migrations... The most interesting work in American literature has often been done by such writers

Sharp and moving

An impressive and moving debut

The immigrant's plight is sensitively captured... But this is not a story of hopelessness - rather, it's the gritty determination and the dark wit...and perspicacity with which Sepha can view his adopted homeland that make this a rich, moving read

This potent book about America's most disgraceful sin establishes [Ta-Nehisi Coates] as a first-rate novelist.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has emerged as an important public intellectual and perhaps America's most incisive thinker about race.

Slavery, forgetting and memory are at the heart of Coates's ambitious, compelling first novel...