Someone Like Us

Dinaw Mengestu's novel follows Mamush, who gave up a once-promising career in journalism for a new life in Paris, where he met Helen, a photographer whose way of seeing showed him the possibility of love and a family. Five years later, with his marriage near collapse, he leaves his young family and goes back to the close-knit Ethiopian immigrant community in Washington, D.C., that shaped his childhood. At its center are his stoic mother and Samuel, a larger-than-life father figure whose charm has always covered a harder truth. On the day Mamush arrives, Samuel is found dead in his garage.

Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2024.