Last month, Molly Anderson sipped her first cup of freshly-ground Yemeni coffee at The Bean, where owner Wes Van Cott had purchased dozens of bags shipped from the Middle East. It was smooth, she said, like no coffee she had tried before.

“There is a refinement to it. It’s much better than the one we have downstairs in the kitchen,” she said.

Anderson, executive director of the Atheneum, had wanted to try the coffee since she read Dave Eggers’ book, “The Monk of Mokha,” several months before. Reading the story of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a second-generation Yemeni-American’s journey to war-torn Yemen to set up a coffee business, made her want to try a cup of the famous coffee herself.

The book is also this year’s One Book One Island selection. Eleven events centered on coffee and Yemen, two themes in “The Monk of Mokha,” kick off tomorrow with an opening reception for “Salam and the Art of Coffee,” an exhibition at the Artists Association of Nantucket’s Cecelia Joyce & Seward Johnson Gallery.

AFP.