Dinaw Mengestu and Akhil Sharma

Mengestu’s All Our Names switches back and forth between Uganda and America: it is a taut, searing novel that blazes with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives. It is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination, of the names we are given and the names we earn. Sharma’s Family Life is a vivid and wrenching portrait of sibling relationships and the impact of tragedy on one family displaced from Delhi to America. They talk to Gaby Wood.