The Monk of Mokha

"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 * Bridgemakers such as Mokhtar courageously embody America's reason for being - as a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome... a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale * The Guardian * It's hard to imagine ALkhanshali's story being told with more pace, scope or sensitivity. An extraordinary adventure * The Times * Mokhtar's story is a remarkable one, full of derring-do, tenacity and exceptional luck * Metro * It is impossible not to root for Mokhtar. And as with all good bildungsromans, it is as much the reader as the hero who receives an education * The Daily Telegraph *"