The Monk of Mokha

Review

Readers will never take coffee for granted or overlook the struggles of Yemen after ingesting Eggers's phenomenally well-written, juggernaut tale of an intrepid and irresistible entrepreneur on a complex and meaningful mission, a highly caffeinated adventure story (Booklist)

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)

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 (Entertainment Weekly)

Works as both a heart-warming success story with a winning central character and an account of real-life adventures that read with the vividness of fiction (Publishers Weekly)

It'll open your eyes - very wide - to the singular origins of your single origin (Esquire (UK))

Definitely one for book club (Elle (UK))

Eggers's narrative is guaranteed to be every bit as compelling as that of any novel (The Observer)

Dave Eggers returns to his "factional" mode with The Monk Of Mokha, in which a Yemeni immigrant to the US discovers an obsession with coffee, returns home, and is caught in a war. Given his previous form with What Is The What and Zeitoun I have high hopes of this book (The Scostman)

This is a book that celebrates ethnic diversity and the exuberance of the human spirit (Mail on Sunday)

[Dave Eggers] is on a mission to use the platform he has created as a writer/activist to give direct voice to the marginalised or unheard... No story is more urgent (Observer)

About the Author

Dave Eggers is the author of twelve books, including The Monk of Mokha; The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier; 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. He is the founder of McSweeney's and the cofounder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired similar programs around the world, and of ScholarMatch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and is the cofounder of Voice of Witness, a book series that illuminates human rights crises through oral history. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letter. His work has been translated into forty- two languages.