What's really in a name?

Dinaw Mengestu's third novel, All Our Names, is a multilayered love story centred on a young man named Isaac.

The plot unfolds across two storylines, in the recently desegregated US and in a Uganda descending into chaos. In his continued exploration of alienation and isolation, the writer devotes his third novel to the significance of names.

The American storyline is narrated by Helen, a social worker, and deals with repressed romantic love in a supposedly free and equal country. The Ugandan strand, narrated by Isaac's exiled Ethiopian friend, explores brotherly love and a refugee's unrequited love for home.

Mengestu uses names and namelessness to illustrate the fluid nature of identity. The son's name is different to the refugee's, and the refugee's is relative to time and space.

The aimlessly drifting Ethiopian sheds his 13 family names on arriving in Kampala. He is later given a dozen more by Isaac, but remains nameless until the end.

Helen, who has spent her entire life in the same tiny, stagnant microcosm, has but one name, given to her by her father for reasons he couldn't remember. When Helen asks her lover for his mother's name, he tells her that it doesn't matter as everyone calls her mother, and because they will never meet.

The ruthlessly determined Isaac sticks to his name - his deceased parents' legacy - until the day he gives it away in a unique gesture.

Mengestu, a recipient of the Genius Grant (the MacArthur Fellowship) depicts his characters' existences with psychological insight, empathy and careful attention. He captures the solitude and vulnerability of unspectacular people, who are out of step with themselves and the world, without resorting to pity or sentimentality.

If Mengestu's explorations carry a message, it is probably that the inherent dignity of human beings - unlike both names and identities - is non-negotiable.

• All Our Names, published by Random House is available at Exclusive Books for R286