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	• What Is the What (Vintage) Dave Eggers Vintage, 2007 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 163 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

hearbreaking and uplifitng

This book blew me away. It is both heartbreaking and uplifting, and left me in tears many times as I read. Valentino Achak Deng is a wonderful role model, able to always wish others a blessed day when his own life has been so full of trauma and upheaval. I wish him success in all he does, and I heartily recommend this book to all. Dave Eggers has done a wonderful job of making us hear Deng's voice, and has structured the story in a way that really pulls the reader in. Kudos to both of them!

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Valentino's story brings out all the emotion of the issues going on in Africa. I couldn't wait to read more every day. The author's style was easy to keep track of using the flashback method of storytelling. One of my co-workers has met Valentino and will be joining our bookclub for our discussion - this should be really good.

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Bowls of Bright Oranges

As told to author, Dave Eggers, in What is the What, Valentino Achak Deng, recounts his walking journey from the war-torn Sudan and how he eventually arrived in the United States . In this epic novel, that made it to the New York Times bestsellers list, we are introduced to one of the "Lost Boys", survivors of the massacre to their homeland who walked a journey that lasted months with many other motherless (and fatherless) boys and some girls. We realize that many of them made the journey while more did not, having lost their lives to hunger, malaria, being eaten by lions, eating raw meat, the enemy soldiers, and loss of hope among many other things. Achak's hope was in getting to their destination where there would be "bowls of bright oranges" on every kitchen table.

Achak "tells" his story, while living in Atlanta , GA , to the many people he encounters in his life through his daily living. The beginning of his retelling starts as he is being subjected to a home invasion. While he is gagged, he obviously cannot physically talk, but in his mind, he is telling one of his captors, a child, his story as if to say, "Don't you know what I've been through? So why would you pick me to do this to?". In "telling" his story to the people he encounters, we meet his childhood friends, William K, Moses, his walking partner, Deng, Achor Achor, and the leader of the walking boys, Dut. We learn of their fates and how without each of these boys, Ackak does not know how he would have made it.

While reading this novel, I thought of my own son, a nine year-old boy, around the same age that Achak was while on his journey. As many sons are to their mothers, Achak was enamored with his. He frequently remembers her bright yellow dress and through his description, you can visualize the deep admiration, respect and love he had for her for she was everything to him. So to have to leave everything you know and venture on this journey, having to know who to trust and who knows the safest journey, when to rest, and when to keep walking, is so much for an adult, but especially for little boys. That he made it through this journey simply speaks to God's purpose that he had for this boy and increased my faith just by reading about it. We also learn, as readers, what the "what" is.

Dave Eggers did an awesome job of helping Achak tell his story. In reading, you definitely get a sense of Achak's dialect. In addition, while reading, I really heard Achak's voice; it read like a transcription. Dave Eggers made himself invisible so you could know Achak and his journey. This novel has a subject matter I thought was going to be difficult to get through, however he told the story for Achak in a poignant, sometimes funny way with a beautiful use of language and emotion that surpasses all boundaries of language or culture. This book is highly recommended for those that enjoy stories of hope and perseverance.

Lena Willis
APOOO BookClub

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Great book

Wonderful book, a great read and fit into my college class perfectly. Arrived in great condition!

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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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

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