Author Talk with Dave Eggers of The Monk of Mokha

From the bestselling author of The Circle and What Is the What, a heart-pounding true story that weaves together the history of coffee, the struggles of everyday Yemenis living through civil war, and the courageous journey of a young man--a Muslim and a U.S. citizen--following the most American of dreams.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings brought up by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age twenty-four, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman until a chance encounter awakens his interest in coffee and its rich history in Yemen. Reinventing himself, he sets out to learn about coffee cultivation, roasting, and importing. He travels to Yemen and visits farms in every corner of the country collecting samples, eager to improve cultivation methods and help Yemeni farmers bring their coffee back to its former glory. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015. The U.S. embassy closes, Saudi bombs begin to rain down on the country, and Mokhtar is trapped in Yemen.

Dave Eggers is the author of eleven books, including: The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier, longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France's Prix Médicis Etranger and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His nonfiction and journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Essays. He is the founder of McSweeney's, the publishing company that distributes the Voice of Witness series of books, which use oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. He is the cofounder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers with locations around the country, and ScholarMatch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his work has been translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Northern California with his family.