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Staff Pick
Like most of Eggers's books, The Monk of Mokha wears its themes on its sleeve — but that's a large part of why I read Eggers in the first place, and Monk doesn't disappoint. I came to read about Yemeni coffee, but ended up — delightfully — learning about much more than that. Recommended By Ashleigh B., Powells.com
Dave Eggers has always been excellent at creating a time capsule of what's happening in American society, and The Monk of Mokha is no exception. Eggers should be ranked with authors like Erik Larson and Hampton Sides for his riveting narrative nonfiction. The Monk of Mokha provides a thorough and entertaining ride through the history of coffee, told alongside the story of a Yemeni American and his uplifting, dangerous adventure to bring Yemeni coffee to the Bay area. It's one of Eggers's best pieces of nonfiction. Recommended By Jeffrey J., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The Monk of Mokha is the exhilarating true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war.
Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen's central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral homeland to tour terraced farms high in the country's rugged mountains and meet beleaguered but determined farmers. But when war engulfs the country and Saudi bombs rain down, Mokhtar has to find a way out of Yemen without sacrificing his dreams or abandoning his people.
Review
"The remarkable true story of a Yemeni coffee farmer… A vibrant depiction of courage and passion, interwoven with a detailed history of Yemeni coffee and a timely exploration of Muslim American identity." David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly
Review
"A most improbable and uplifting success story....Eggers offers an appealing hybrid: a biography of a charming, industrious Muslim man who has more ambition than direction; a capsule history of coffee and its origins, growth, and development as a mass commodity and then as a niche product; the story of Blue Bottle, the elite coffee chain in San Francisco that some suspect (and some fear) could turn into the next Starbucks; an adventure story of civil war in a foreign country....It is hard to resist the derring-do of the Horatio Alger of Yemenite coffee." Kirkus starred review
About the Author
Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing house in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney’s publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District. Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers lives in Northern California with his family.
Dave Eggers on PowellsBooks.Blog
I had my first cup of coffee when I was 35. My wife and I were new parents and sleep was elusive, so to stay awake and have even a little acuity, I needed a new source of caffeine — Diet Mountain Dew wasn’t working anymore. I will say that when you come to coffee relatively late in life, it has an otherworldly kick...
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