All Our Names

This story appears to be a narrative about a man called Issac, told from two different points of view in two different times, and , however, I think this character is the less known as the book is closed.

The story is divided in two parts. One is named 'Issac' and displays the adventures two young men live in revolutionary times in Uganda. We are never told the name of the narrator: he is called 'the professor', 'Dickens', 'Heaney' and several names as the narrative goes on and his connection with books  is shown.We learn of the Ugandan war for independence, the rebel group to overthrown the government and the role of the university students in it. The narrator blindly trusts Issac, and in a degree, at least at the beginning, he idiolises him. However, his bond with a powerful man changes everything, and their relationship trembles.

The other part is called 'Helen' and narrates the life of a social assistant in the United States, and the affair she has with a young African man named Issac, who has travelled to America as an exchange student, presumably escaping from a dangerous situation in his country. As tines goes by, Helen starts discovering gaps in Issac's story, and his persistent silence to her questions strenghtens the idea that he is hidding facts from his past that he is embarrassed or ashamed of.

The reader easily makes the connection between the 'Issac' in Uganda and the exchange student in America. However, the author masterfully handles the suspense, and not everything is as it appears to be.

Mengestu is one of the most aclaimed contemporary writer in the United States, giving to his sentences a unique density, portraying the complexity of today world as people from different cultures meet, conflict arising from the diversity of our origins.

Ana Ovejero

mail: ana.ovejero@gmail.com

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