The immensely gifted and giving Eggers ... portrays Yemeni American Mokhtar Alkhanshali, who, after an unruly childhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, a transformative stay in Yemen with his grandfather, and success as a car salesman, finally finds his calling, which proves to be quixotic and dangerous: he commits himself to restoring Yemen's long-forgotten standing as the world's first and best coffee producer. Eggers crisply recounts coffee's delectably roguish history, into which Mokhtar's Sisyphean struggles fit perfectly.... 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. -Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

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 (starred review)

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. -David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

Surreal... Eggers tells the exciting true story of a Yemeni-American man's attempts to promote his ancestral country's heritage, giving both a timely gloss on the traditional American dream and a window into the nightmare of contemporary political instability... [The Monk of Mokha] works as both a heartwarming success story with a winning central character and an account of real-life adventures that read with the vividness of fiction. -Publishers Weekly