Award-winning writer Dinaw Mengestu, whose works chronicle the African diaspora in America, will speak on “Politics and Aesthetics in Literature,” at Boston College on Apr. 8 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Since the debut of his bestselling novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Mengestu’s work has earned him prestigious accolades, such as the Guardian First Book Award, the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” designation, and a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship. Born in 1978 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Mengestu immigrated to the United States at age two with his mother and sister to join his father, who had fled Ethiopia during the Red Terror. His most recent novel, All Our Names (Vintage/Random House, 2014), set in the American Midwest, alternates between narrators Isaac (an African exchange student) and Helen (an American social worker assigned to work with him), and interweaves disparate tales of naming, loving and belonging. His BC appearance is co-sponsored by Fiction Days, the Lowell Humanities Series and African and African Diaspora Studies. New York Times book review | Washington Post book review