THE MONK OF MOKHA

Dion Graham narrates this stirring audiobook splendidly. His narration shapes the mind and spirit of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a Yemeni-American from San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood who pursues his dream to import coffee from his ancestral home. Graham delivers a fine reading of his harrowing experiences: He's detained at gunpoint, drives his coffee samples cross country during Saudi bombing raids, and enters Ethiopia without papers. Listeners will be rapt. Graham's performance brings the two worlds of San Francisco's specialty coffee scene and civil war-torn Yemen together as the story charts the course of the intrepid hero. Mokhtar's mission is to create an import business to help Yemenis sell their world-class product abroad. How he succeeds makes for a remarkable audiobook. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2018]