by Dave Eggers · 2018
The Monk of Mokha is Dave Eggers's narrative nonfiction account of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a young Yemeni American from San Francisco's Tenderloin who sets out to revive his ancestral homeland's centuries-old coffee trade. Impulsive and self-taught, Mokhtar travels into war-torn Yemen just as a Saudi-led bombing campaign and Houthi advance close in around him, determined to source and export specialty-grade beans from remote highland farms. Eggers braids his harrowing escape from a besieged Sana'a together with the deeper history of coffee's origins in Yemen, producing a story of ambition, heritage, and survival.