# How to Read the Air

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![How to Read the Air](https://quivercdn.com/covers/riverhead-books/dinaw-mengestu/how-to-read-the-air_978-15-9448-539-8.jpg?v=2026-06-17%2004%3A18%3A14)

- Book: [How to Read the Air](https://www.bookquiver.com/dinaw-mengestu/how-to-read-the-air) ([How to Read the Air.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/dinaw-mengestu/how-to-read-the-air.md))
- Authors: [Dinaw Mengestu](https://www.bookquiver.com/dinaw-mengestu)
- Publisher: Riverhead Books
- ISBN: 978-15-9448-539-8
- Language: en_US
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

A powerful and moving summer read that explores love, grief and the reality of the contemporary American immigrant experience Jonas, fresh from a failed marriage, is desperate to make sense of the ties that have forged him. How can he dream of a future when he can't make sense of his past? He hits the road, tracing the route that his parents - young Ethiopians in search of an identity as an American couple - took thirty years earlier to Nashville, Tennessee. In a stunning display of imagination he weaves together a history that takes him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to a brighter vision of his own life in contemporary America, a story - real or invented- that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption. ‘A story of exile and redemption, beautifully written’ The Times