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	• What Is the What (Vintage) Dave Eggers Vintage, 2007 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 152 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Lost Boy's Journey

What is the What is the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, which is also a novel by Dave Eggers, the brilliantly gifted author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers met Deng, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, in 2003. Inspired by the story of Deng's life, Eggers resolved to write a biography. Instead, he created a work of fiction with the major events of Deng's life as a touchstone.

Eggers writes in the voice of Deng's thoughts as he is being held captive in his Atlanta apartment by burglars. This device allows for a simple, straightforward, yet shifting style that allows the narrative to jump from historical account to coming of age story to love story to assimilation story and nearly everything in between. This style also reflects the oral tradition of African folklore, with moments and descriptions carved to their essence. The novel is alternately heartwrenching, uplifting, wry, thoughtful, and blunt.

It's not only the style of the writing that is effective, but the story itself is affecting. We follow Deng's journey from the destruction of his idyllic village, Marial Bal, to his present circumstances in America. Alternately known as Achak, Dominic, Valentino, Gone Far, and Sleeper, depending on the company, Deng fled the sudden and violent destruction of his village in a wild run into the blackness of night and found himself walking among untold numbers of other boys to Ethiopa. The images Eggers gives of this walk will remain firmly implanted in your memory--holding the boy in front in the blind night, the desperate scramble when a lion or helicopter appears, and, most disturbing, the images of boys simply stopping, giving up, and resting their heads against trees never to be seen again. Deng eventually makes it to a refugee camp in Kenya and is finally on the list of refugees relocated to America. There is too much that occurs to describe here and no description that would equal the grace, simplicity, and care of Eggers writing.

"I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there." Deng and Eggers state simply at the end of the novel. "How can I pretend you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as pretending that I do not exist." Deng's story, in the closing, turns into a plea for acknowledgement, for sharing, and hope for a people and region all too often ignored. This story, as well written and as affecting as it is, makes it all but impossible to forget that people like Deng exist and travesties like those in Sudan occur.

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Great read

This is a fictionalized account of a real-life Sudanese refugee, Valentino Achak Deng--one of the young boys driven out of Sudan by the Islamist government in the `80s and `90s who came to be known as the "Lost Boys." The suffering that he and the thousands of other refugees went through is unimaginable. Most of the boys fled southern Sudan in groups after seeing their families shot, burned, stabbed, or butchered by government soldiers. During their flight, some are killed by soldiers, some taken by lions, and many starve to death. It is a violent, desperate trek that takes them into Ethiopia, where they settle for some time, only to be chased out by Ethiopians. The scene of this flight, as thousands of refugees try to cross the Gilo river, mothers losing their babies, some being eaten by crocodiles, and Ethiopians firing at them from the bank, is the probably the most horrific scene in a book filled with them.

Eventually, many of the boys were relocated to the U.S. where they were promised opportunity. And while the situation here was certainly better than in Sudan, the opportunity is harder to come by. They're scattered across the country, and Deng winds up in Atlanta. "God has a problem with me," he says, after a string of exceptionally bad events. After what he's been through, it seems like an understatement.

Eggers does a great job at creating a believable and likable voice. Deng is a real person, and Eggers spent much time interviewing him prior to writing the book. The authenticity of it all comes through, and Eggers own voice from his previous works, which is great but sometimes a little too clever for its own good, is non-existent in this story. Probably the greatest weakness of the book is also its strength. By fictionalizing the account, Eggers can build the narrative for a better read, but he also leaves it open to the question of what actually happened. Still, as he says in the forward, any of this could, and much of it did happen. And for anyone familiar with the history of the genocide in Sudan, as horrible as the events are, they're all plausible.

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A review on What is the What

This is an excellent book that gives a reader a glimpse into the unimaginable lives of the Lost Boys who walked from the Sudan to Ethiopia to escape civil war. It is a compelling book on a difficult subject. The reader experiences the story through the life of one individual.

Answers the Question and Demands More Questions

Deng's and Egger's collaboration in writing this epic story is brillant. Fictionalzing Deng's biography enables the reader to hear one man's story that belongs to thousands of children who survived a modern-day holocaust - and that of thousands more who did not. People outside of Sudan may be touched by news accounts of the government's destruction of Dinkaland. This book goes further: it may well be our first upclose look at how the competition for natural resources and legacy of European colonialism have contributed to the on-going attempt to destroy a culture. But, the Dinkas are resilient and continue to re-build at home and in the diaspora. Eggers captures Deng's voice in cadence and syntax, invoking the reader's shared laughter and tears as Deng encounters and overcomes horrific events. The book begins with a home invasion - in Atlanta, USA. Still naive after facing the murderous invasion of his town in Sudan, Deng opens his door to a stranger in need and becomes yet again a victim. He starts telling his life-story to the robbers. They can't hear him, of course, because he's been blooded, bound and gagged. He cannot be silenced. He continues relating his story to other characters, and through them to the reader. This book brings colored and nuanced reality to what is happening in an important region in the world. That's the What.

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Fantastic story

Wonderful story, very well told and well written. Really hard to put down. Makes you want to do something about the atrocities in the Sudan, and the hardships these people continue to suffer here in the US.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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