This powerful book taught me so much about the Lost Boys. ( )

A great book - Eggers is much less "present" in this than he is in his other books. But he has nailed the refugee experience perfectly, and brings across Achak's story in just the deadpan way required to make you feel the horror of it all. ( )

I was given this book by my mother after she had read it. And I have to say that I loved the book. This mans life was so sad and unbelievable at times. I have decided that this kind of book should be required reading for schools.The awareness this book brings is needed for our future and the future of Sudan. I hope this book will be read by many here and the stories of the Lost Boys journey. ( )

This book follows the life of Achek Deng through hundreds of miles of hiking through Africa, and through life in America. Switching from the present to the past, Deng's story is told always through his eyes, although his perspective changed over time. Never given the full story until the end, this book is surprisingly easy to follow, and hard to put down. Deng's story is tragic in almost every way, although joy can be found in the togetherness of the Lost Boys once they reach America. This book is well written, horribly sad, remarkably funny, and definitely worth your time.

If you didn't know Dave Eggers wrote this book, you wouldn't know he wrote this book. In other words, he stepped aside and let the main character speak through him into the book, telling his story of the Sudanese civil war, genocide, his experience in refugee camps and in the US as a resettled Lost Boy. It's heartbreaking without being at all manipulative. This might not be the most enjoyable book I read this year, but it's definitely one of the most important. ( )

If you didn't know Dave Eggers wrote this book, you wouldn't know he wrote this book. In other words, he stepped aside and let the main character speak through him into the book, telling his story of the Sudanese civil war, genocide, his experience in refugee camps and in the US as a resettled Lost Boy. It's heartbreaking without being at all manipulative. This might not be the most enjoyable book I read this year, but it's definitely one of the most important. ( )

If you didn't know Dave Eggers wrote this book, you wouldn't know he wrote this book. In other words, he stepped aside and let the main character speak through him into the book, telling his story of the Sudanese civil war, genocide, his experience in refugee camps and in the US as a resettled Lost Boy. It's heartbreaking without being at all manipulative. This might not be the most enjoyable book I read this year, but it's definitely one of the most important. ( )

What do you look for in a good book? Great descriptions? Many different characters? Or even a different point of view? Well, What is the What had all of those things. This book written by Dave Eggers is very unique. It has many different characters such as; Achor Achor, Moses, William K, and Dut Majok joined Valentino Achak Deng on his journey through life. His story is told extremely well because of the details and description. I felt as if I was a character in the story because the story felt real. What is the What is about a young Sudanese boy who was forced out of his home because of the horrific civil war. He has to walk hundreds of miles and relocate various times. All of this is happening while Achak has no clue if his family is alive, or if he will ever return home. Achak and the thousands other boys who faced what he faced are called the Lost Boys. This book is even more interesting because it is told from his point of view.
Many of the characters were friends because of the hardships that they had shared. They were seen as a group because they had a common set back, but many of them in fact did not have much in common. One reason they couldn’t find shared interests is that they were from all over southern Sudan, were the rituals and customs were varied depending on where you were from. My favorite character was Dut, because he was always doing things for the good of the group. Even though sometimes the boys didn’t understand Dut’s reasoning, the recognized that without him they would not have survived.
Throughout the book it seemed like everything that could have gone wrong for Achak did. There were only a few times in the book where I felt happy and excited. One of these was when Achak finally got to speak to his father again. This was my favorite part because even though at first the call didn’t get through, Achak kept hope. This made me feel that I shouldn’t give up on things just because they don’t work out at first. Many things that Achak did in this book made me feel this way because it seemed like the book was more about Achak’s struggles than his rewards.
The only part of the book that I didn’t like was the beginning of the chapters. Achak would start out the chapter by talking about his life today, but then suddenly transition into his story. In some ways this was good and in others bad. Sometimes this made the story have a better flow to it while other times it didn’t. Even though both parts of the story were good separately, at some points they did not go together. This was what caused the book not to flow in certain parts.
I thought that What is the What was a great book. It never got boring or lost the intensity that made it so great. I enjoyed reading about Achak growing and learning more about himself, and the world. This book was made even better because of the unique point of view. I had never read a book written by a young Sudanese man, or seen the world from his eyes. This book was just that, and was fascinating because of it. What is the What showed that if you never give up and fight for your dreams they will come true. ( )

Everyone should read this book. It is a (barely) fictionalized biogrophy - told in the voice of Achak - a Sudanese Refugee. It is beautiful and tragic and alive and hopeful. A new favourite.
It is so well told as a novel, and yet the most unbelievable parts of this young man's story are completely true. There is a website you can read, after finishing the book, to stay a part of this story- Achak's and Sudan's- as it continues. I have been working with Sudanese refugees for years, and this book gave me a very intimate glimpse into some stories and the cultures and experiences of refugee life. It is very touching, sad but beautiful and important. There is some hopefulness in the end. ( )

The contrast between the beautiful language and ugly events was startling, but in part this contrast made the book what it is. without the eloquence it would be easy to ignore, block out, or give in to the feeling of helplessness or even call the whole situation unbelievable, exaggerated, made-up, and impossible to solve. Without the brutality and conflict witnessed by Achak Deng, there is no story - the plot would be: man moves from Africa to USA and his home is burgled. I'm horribly paraphrasing when I write that conflict is essential to story telling and prismatically reflects characters, cultures, and chronology so readers can more clearly see the nature of the subject. By that standard, every story of Africa should be as riveting as this one. Novelizing this memoir, and presumably smoothing out, embellishing, and aggregating experience, Eggers allows us as readers to more clearly see Deng, Sudan, and Sudanese refuges in North America. The depth provided by this prism is much greater even than what I have been able to gather from news streams and 'special reports', and even more clear than what I can decipher from Save Darfur slogans and other advocates. ( )

http://pergelator.blogspot.com/2008/1... ( )

Based on true facts, this novel is about a young boy from Sudan forced to flee for his life during a civil war. Intense with some violence. ( )

I'm glad I read this. I hardly knew anything about Sudan before I did, and I learned a lot from this book. However, it was sooooo difficult. Not the language—this was the first thing I read by Dave Eggers, and I found his style graceful and uncomplicated—but the subject. It was depressing. And I'm sure that's very realistic of the life of Valentino. But I had to keep putting this down and picking up lighter things to read, so it took me almost twice as long as normal to finish a book of this length. Like I said, I'm glad I read it, it felt important to do, but I don't know that I'd want to do it again. ( )

A semi-autobiographical tale of one amongst the thousands of ‘Lost Boys’ caught in a civil war, fleeing his home in Marial Bai and marching across the Sudan to find safety elsewhere. It is partially the story of the tragedy of the Sudan, but also the story of the sometimes overwhelming immigrant experience. While Achak often tries to express his gratitude to the many who came to his rescue I often felt otherwise. For example, his jobs in the US which paid $6.00 or $8.00 an hour (years ago) are not good enough for him. It seems it never occurred to him that many people much more qualified than he is are living on that wage today, and that much of the money that helped him arrive in this country came from charitable organizations that received donations from many people making only $6.00 or $8.00 an hour here, yet sending a portion to others to help. Here is a quote from the book “It was the habit of so many I knew, in Kakuma and later, to take the generosity of a person and stretch it to the breaking.” It is the underlying sense that I took away from the book. Achak come from a very proud nation and heritage, as is especially evident in the telling of the tale of the beginning of time in ‘What is the What,’ but in today’s sea of humanity such hubris can often lead to war.

Interesting link to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation:

VAD Foundation ( )

Tough to read, but an important book because it humanizes the horrendous situations caused by a civil war in Africa that got very little ink in American newspapers. Eggers used the voice of Valentino to tell his own story and I will never forget this man or his struggles. ( )

What Is The What is a powerful, moving, thought provoking book. Egger's worked with Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan now living in the US, to write the story of his childhood and adolescence fleeing the violence of Sudan and surviving in refugee camps in Ethopia and Kenya. It is a terrible and emotionally challenging story, yet it is told with hope and humor. Eggers writes it beautifully, grounding Deng's remembrances in the present by presenting them as his mental telling of his history to those he meets through a harrowing night in his life in America. This book will stay with you, perhaps even haunt you, and certainly make you grateful for what you have. It's a beautiful book. Highly recommended. ( )

A big departure from Eggers previous works, "What is the What" is an autobiography of one the "Lost Boys" of the Sudan. The story is simply and beautifully told, and the book will stay with you. There are so many instances of extreme pain and suffering that this man and his people went through that, perhaps as a shock reflex, it didn't even sink in completely until I was well into the book. Eventually though, it's hard not to get emotional, and William K put me over. This is great writing and an education into a tragedy that has happened in our lifetimes, I highly recommend it.

Some quotes, yeah they're all over the map and don't really capture the story in any way, but I liked them....

"My father, who had many wives, rejected the new religion on these grounds, and also because to him the Christians seemed preoccupied with written language. My father and mother could not read; not many people his age could. - You go to your Church of Books, he said. - You'll come back when your senses return.

"Humans are divided between those who can still look through they eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome."

"There were many who assumed that the country would be split into two, the north and the south, because the two regions had been fused under the British, after all, and because the two sides shared so few cultural identities. But this is where the British sowed the seeds for disaster in our country, which are still being harvested today."

"When I was finished, I told William K that I was sorry. I was sorry that I had not known how sick he was. That I had not found a way to keep him alive. That I was the last person he saw on this earth. That he could not say goodbye to his mother and father, that only I would know where his body lay. It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K."

"Do you know that it was George Bush, the father, who found the major oil deposits under the soil of Sudan? Yes, this is what is said. This was 1974, and at the time, Bush Sr. was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bush was an oil person, of course, and he was looking at some satellite maps of Sudan that he had access to, or that his oil friends had made, and these maps indicated that there was oil in the region. He told the government of Sudan about this, and this was the beginning of the first significant exploration, the beginning of U.S. oil involvement in Sudan, and, to some extent, the beginning of the middle of the war."

"I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If ever I love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love."

"As the land passed by, I saw my parents, my approximated visions of them, on every hill and around each bend. It seemed as logical as anything else that they would be there, on the road ahead of us. Why couldn't they be here, why couldn't we will ourselves together again?"

"I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist." ( )

counting my blessings after reading this book, I am. ( )

My first surprise on opening the cover of Dave Eggers novel What is the What was the subtitle The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. As my mind struggled to reconcile finding the word "autobiography" on a book plucked from the fiction shelves, I proceeded on to the book's content - a first person memoir of the life of a refugee. Eggers' voice disappeared as the pages turned and the story became solely that of Deng one of Sudan's "Lost Boys" struggling to make a life for himself in America while haunted by the memories of the existence he left behind.

As the story unfolds in the present, Valentino takes his encounters with strangers in America and uses them to mentally reflect on his experiences in Africa. By silently telling others his story (which translates as a complete narration to the reader) he seeks their understanding, their sympathy and their grace and as a reader I couldn't help being captivated by his turbulent journey. There is joy in his childhood in a remote village where a bicycle is a prized and wondrous possession. There is fear in his flight across the wilds of Sudan narrowly avoiding lions and slower killers like disease and starvation. There is desperation in his life at the refugee camp dreaming of something better for himself and wondering if his family has survived as well. There is awkwardness to his arrival in America and the culture clash of living as an outsider in a new homeland.

What is the What is a highly emotional and moving book. Eggers has expertly blurred the lines between fact and fiction to create a fully realized and seamless narration of hardship and endurance in the life of a refugee. With an overarching theme of compassion for others in the face of evil, Valentino Achak Deng's story is immensely powerful. This is a book that will stay with you, will keep you thinking and and reflecting on it, long after the back cover is closed. ( )

One of my favorite books although I absolutely hate the events of the story. There is not enough room on this website for me to adequately explain what I think about this work. But I can say that any thinking person will come away from this book moved to his/her very core. I look forward to seeing what the book's main character, Valentino Achak Deng, accomplishes during the remainder of his stay here on earth. ( )

Curiosity (and some browsing on Barnes & Noble's website) made me choose this book. It also made me start reading it the moment I received it in the mail as a Secret Santa gift.

I'm not familiar with any previous works of Dave Eggers (save for an essay he wrote for [The Thinking Man's Guide To The World Cup]), so I didn't know what I was going to expect from this book.

The book itself is what it is outlined in the back cover summary: a fictionalized novel based on the life of a "Lost Boy" of Sudan who treks far from his homeland after being caught up in a war of sorts and ends up struggling to make a new life for himself when he goes to America as a refugee.

Eggers tries to blend Valentino's current life in America with his troubled past in Africa and, for the most part, he does it rather well. The only moments that make me feel a bit uncomfortable is when he (Valentino) starts addressing the person by his or her name and tells bits and pieces of his own life as if they know them. I would venture a guess that there is supposed to be some meaning behind it, but it only makes me feel less willing to read on.

The other little gripe is how unevenly the book is separated into three parts (or "books"), the first part dragging far long into the book (that being Valentino's assault and robbery in the present, which in turn starts the winding narrative of his past life in Sudan before and during the conflict that reaches his home village). It was somewhat frustrating to read as what happened to him in the present completely distracted me from what happened to him in the past. The remaining two parts were not much of a problem as the first part, which made it more easier for me to distinguish his past and present life.

Despite the flaws, I still thought it was a fascinating, if not thought-provoking, book to read. I don't know if I want to recommend it to anyone, but it might be one of the first books to start if one wants to read an account of a life of a "Lost Boy". ( )

So sad. So brutal. So Enlightening

Extremely gripping and an excellent book, couldn't put it down. Not actually a novel, in the sense of War and Peace or Fathers and Sons, with that perfect structure, but the best book in the world when you're reading it. ( )

When so much hype and reputation converge on such a complex and sensitive topic only to receive unchecked praise from the American publishing industry and profitable sales, I fear disaster, choir-preaching and the perpetration of harmful stereotypes. Despite my interest in African literature, in African conflicts and in the way that the developed world engages with Africa, I have been avoiding this book since I learned of its existence. A friend of mine who has lived and worked in Sudan vouched unreservedly for its authenticity and inoffensiveness and lent me her copy; I’m not mad at her.

Dave Eggers more or less avoids cheapening his subject, weakening his message or losing credibility for the duration of a book comprised of stories that would tempt a narrator with less integrity to deploy every variety of manipulative, sensationalist, suspenseful and tear-jerking prose. The result is an unflinching, straight-forward, trustworthy and revealing testimony. I have no doubt that “What is the What” has communicated more deeply about the reality of Sudan’s recent atrocities than most other products in any media. And I consider this more of an ethical accomplishment than a literary one. Modern pragmatist philosophers (such as Richard Rorty) contend that one of the best ways to act ethically is to work towards expanding the circles of empathy of as many people as you can. They suggest doing this by telling stories from new perspectives that familiarize and humanize marginalized and oppressed peoples and by creating ethnographies that do the same work on a more scholarly level. A book like this is supposed to raise awareness, to sensitize people and to encourage action. To the extent that this book makes it harder for people to be idle or disinterested in the face of circumstances like those in the South of Sudan, it is successful; to the extent that it prompts people to take action about such circumstances, it is impressively so.

Now, I’m not thrilled with Eggers’s decision to play a little game with the genre—calling this both an autobiography and a novel—and I’m not convinced by the reasons that are given for his doing so. Nor am I entirely comfortable with the narrative tactic of making Achak Deng directly address different parts of his story to whichever American seems to be disappointing him in the contemporary portion of “What is the What.” As readers quickly discover, the chapters of Deng’s tale that transpire in Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya are related by him (in his mind, somewhat accusingly) over the course of less than two days to Americans with whom he is interacting. It is all rather obvious that the Americans he addresses are just the cogs in the machinery of our populace, the people who refuse agency and responsibility, the people who are passive accomplices to the neglect of people like Deng—whether they struggle at dead end jobs, making change at our supermarkets or whether they struggle to survive in crude structures built of trash amidst vulnerable refugees on the far side of earth. It’s an interesting tactic, clearly built to abolish narrative distance and to refresh a sense of accountability; but it can seem a bit forced.

I don’t think the prose warrants excerpting or stylistic analysis, nor am I tempted to highlight any particular episodes of Deng’s life. There are charming bits to the story, therapeutic moments of good fortune and humanity and there are scarring accounts of human behavior at its worst. The book is worth reading for its even keeled navigation of these moments, for the insight it offers into life in a refugee camp and for the mirror that it holds up to the United States as it fails to approximate the ideal of “sanctuary.” Respect to Dave Eggers for donating the profits he could have made from this endeavor to the cause of other Lost Boys from Sudan. ( )

i put this book down for too long and couldnt get back into it, however the part i did read was excellent! (i have a very small attention span :) ( )