Dinaw Mengestu is an American journalist and novelist. Originally born in Ethiopia, he has written about the conflicts in Uganda and Darfur. He has written two novels, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air.
 

"The world around us is alive, he would have said, with our emotions and thoughts, and the space between any two people are charged with them all. He had learned early in his life that before any violent gesture there is a moment when the act is born, not as something that can be seen or felt, but by the change it precipitates in the air."

– Dinaw Mengestu, How to Read the Air