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Dinaw Mengestu, who won the Guardian First Book Award in 2007 for his novel Children of the Revolution (Jonathan Cape), following it up in 2010 with How to Read the Air, also for Cape, has moved to Sceptre with two new novels.
Publishing director Carole Welch acquired British Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from PJ Mark and Cecile Barendsma at Janklow & Nesbit in New York.
First out in June will be All Our Names, set between post-colonial Uganda and the American Midwest in the 1970s and described as "an exceptionally powerful political novel that offers a transfixing portrait of love and grace, self-determination, the names we are given and the names we earn." Knopf is the US publisher.
Welch said: "Dinaw Mengestu has already made his mark on the international stage as an extremely gifted writer who draw on his Ethiopian heritage as well as his experience as a journalist to create timeless fiction about the human condition. He shows us people confronting situations most of us are lucky enough not to have to deal with – exile, poverty, hunger and violence – and reminds us of our common humanity. I am delighted that such a distinguished and exciting writer has joined Sceptre and look forward to growing his readership and bringing his work to the attention of the wide audience he deserves."
Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and emigrated to the US at the age of two. Children of the Revolution also won France's Prix du Premier Roman Etranger.
Picture by Michael Lionstar