The Monk of Mokha

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The narrative spans continents, cultures and centuries to explore the history of coffee and to describe current events in Yemen. There is, for instance, Sadeq, whom Mokhtar meets on his pell-mell journey to catch a Greek freighter leaving from the port of Aden. He spent three years traveling to more than 30 coffee-growing regions in Yemen, many accessible only on foot through the mountains. He wants to revive the high quality of the Yemeni beans, and goes back to Yemen to explore the situation, but then 2011 and the Arab Spring changes everything in the region.

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers — conflict coffee The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers — conflict coffee

When it comes to coffee, listening to Mokhtar’s enthusiasm—and utter lack of pretension—really made me a convert. Dave Eggers is an engaging storyteller with a flair for dramatic moments, and his biography of Yemeni American entrepreneur Mokhtar Alkhanshali combines a well-paced series of heroic misadventures with fascinating coffee facts. Unfortunately, the end result of Eggers’ meticulous approach to his lead character here is a little too shiny, a little too glossy. BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Its also a great one to recommend to people, from big coffee aficionados to those with just a passing interest in coffee or Yemen.Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. Blue Bottle founder James Freeman describes the moment he first tasted Port of Mokha coffee during a blind cupping: “It absolutely sparkled and I thought, “this is what angels singing tastes like. But Dave Eggers did a great job presenting everything in an organized and conversational tone that had the book reading more like an autobiography in which I imagined Moktar sitting down to tell me his own story. Taken by this image, Mokhtar does some reading, discovering that Yemen is where the first coffee was brewed, but years of internal strife and civil war have decimated the Yemeni coffee industry. From the bestselling author of The Circleand What Is the What, the 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.

The Coffee-Flavored American Dream - The New York Times The Coffee-Flavored American Dream - The New York Times

At Port of Mokha, we believe that the very best coffee does more than provide an incredible experience of drinking it. My conclusion: Mokhtar's adventure is amazing and his efforts to help and improve the lives of Yemeni coffee farmers are admirable. Eggers tends to rely too heavily on the visual—sometimes, the shockingly graphic (“Mokhtar’s earliest memory of San Francisco was of a man defecating on a Mercedes”)—and on factoids that give the story a generic feel. million people are displaced, and we’re currently in the midst of a cholera outbreak that has effected a million people. He was interviewed by the BBC about his experience, and in the car on his way to the conference, he heard the interview on the radio.The Monk of Mokhais not merely about ‘coming to America,’ it is a thrilling chronicle of one man’s coming-and-going between two beloved homelands—a brilliant mirror on the global community we have become.

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers | Goodreads The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers | Goodreads

On his first visit to Yemen as a coffee enthusiast, Mokhtar first visits his grandfather Hamood in Ibb.

Mokhtar, deciding whether to escape by ship, “prayed the Istikhara, a prayer to God to provide answers. Some time later, during that very same first visit, Mokhtar mistakes an olive tree for a coffee plant. It crosses cultures, boundaries, and messy politics to go from the producer’s hands all the way to us.

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers review – smell the coffee

This leaves out the need for people to do the processing; plus, the coffee has a musky and smooth taste, considered delicious by many. And Mokhtar was able to share the good news with the farmers back in Yemen, whose future, despite all the political unrest and economic challenges, was finally looking brighter. Eggers’s first foray into a global subject matter, it nevertheless maintained some continuity of style with the earlier books. James Freeman, the founder, happened to be there that day, so between Mokhtar telling me much of his story, and the setting, it was a really immersive first step. Mokhtar grows up in the Tenderloin, one of the most notoriously crime-ridden neighborhoods of San Francisco.He travels to Yemen and visits countless farms, collecting samples, eager to bring improved cultivation methods to the countryside. Illegal detentions'' (page 289), ''Thinking that there was a remote chance he'd be detained, send to Guantanamo'' (page 295).