Title: What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
Author(s): Dave Eggers
Language: English
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
ISBN: 9780307385901
Extension: EPUB
Size: 466 KB
Subjects: General, Fiction, Historical fiction, United States, Literary, Fiction - General, Biographical fiction, Biographical, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Refugees, Sudan, United States - Emigration and immigration, Sudanese - United States, Refugees - Sudan, Refugees - United States, Sudanese, Sudan - Emigration and immigration, Sudan - History - Civil War; 1983-2005, Deng; Valentino Achak, Valentino Achak, Sudan - History - Civil War, 1983-2005, Deng
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Valentino Achak Deng, real-life hero of this engrossing epic, was a refugee from the Sudanese civil war-the bloodbath before the current Darfur bloodbath-of the 1980s and 90s. In this fictionalized memoir, Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) makes him an icon of globalization. Separated from his family when Arab militia destroy his village, Valentino joins thousands of other "Lost Boys," beset by starvation, thirst and man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, where Valentino pieces together a new life. He eventually reaches America, but finds his quest for safety, community and fulfillment in many ways even more difficult there than in the camps: he recalls, for instance, being robbed, beaten and held captive in his Atlanta apartment. Eggers's limpid prose gives Valentino an unaffected, compelling voice and makes his narrative by turns harrowing, funny, bleak and lyrical. The result is a horrific account of the Sudanese tragedy, but also an emblematic saga of modernity-of the search for home and self in a world of unending upheaval.
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From
Dave Eggers is best known for _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), and here he shows that he is as adroit at telling another person's biography as he is narrating his own. Over three years, he conducted 100 hours of interviews with Deng and visited Sudan with him in "synergistic collaboration" (Time_). Labeled as a novel, this work nonetheless has a historical basis and lends a personal face to the brutality of civil war, squalor, and the struggle for survival. A few critics questioned where Deng's story ended and Eggers's literary license began, and the book as a whole could have been better edited. While visceral and heartrending, Deng's and Eggers's joint story is ultimately a powerful tale of hope. When both People and the ever-glum Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times rave, how can one resist?
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
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