The Light of the World
On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, the painter and chef Ficre Ghebreyesus collapsed and died in front of his wife and sons, leaving the poet Elizabeth Alexander to make sense of a marriage so present it had felt like a country. The Light of the World is her memoir of him and of their life together: the quick first courtship in New Haven, the kitchen that smelled of berbere and basil, the canvases stacked along his studio walls, the boys they raised in a house full of music and Eritrean cooking. She moves between memories of his refugee youth across Sudan, Italy, and Germany, and the slow weeks after his death when grief began to take its own shape. Alexander, who read at President Obama's first inauguration, brings a poet's exactness to the work of grief, refusing easy consolation while insisting that joy and gratitude survive even profound loss.
What you might want to know about The Light of the World
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Yale poet Elizabeth Alexander remembers her marriage to Eritrean American painter and chef Ficre Ghebreyesus, who died of a sudden heart attack at home in New Haven four days after his fiftieth birthday. The book moves through their first meeting, their two sons, and the year after his death.
The most commonly searched recently is The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander (2015), a memoir about her husband's sudden death. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Yes. The Light of the World is Elizabeth Alexander's memoir of grief after her husband Ficre Ghebreyesus died unexpectedly in 2012. Alexander is also the poet who read at Barack Obama's first inauguration.
The Light of the World is 373 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Light of the World takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Light of the World is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Light of the World is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
