Wow, talk about a consuming book.
A friend more or less forced it on me while I was really busy- I cracked it open one night when I had a few moments of spare time, thinking I'd just see what it was about- and then spent every fleeting free moment I had over the next few days devouring it.
'What is the What' is the story of
Valentino Achak Deng, one of the several thousand
Lost Boys of Sudan displaced in the
civil war that gripped the country from the 80's to the mid 00's.
It follows his early childhood, as the first shadows of conflict begin to emerge, to the inevitable attacks on his village, his long, harrowing 'escape' to Kenya, his life in the purgatory of refugee camps and lawless and dangerous world outside, and then his entry into the United States and his experiences there.
From a technical standpoint, this book is a staggering achievement. Writing from Deng's perspective over a few days in America, as he thinks about his life after being attacked and robbed in his own home, brushed off by the police, and generally treated like the failure and non-person he feels he has become, Eggers has found a way to capture what one would imagine both talking too, and being, Deng, is like.
Though not technically a true biography, I also found the process of how this book was written quite fascinating. Starting and working with Deng's intense, and just unrelentingly tragic and violent life, Eggers blended holes in his life with the stories and expierences of other survivors and worked in important events that provide context and further understanding of what was going on.
They're upfront in all this- the introduction tells you that some characters are composites, that some conversations have been imagined when they couldn't be remembered, and so on- but the result is a book that is more 'real' then real, a story that becomes less about an individual man and his specific life, and more about a country, and a people, going through something terrible.
There is no shortage of violence and horror in this book, as it should be. I'd say much of what happens is unfathomable in it's cruelty and inhumanity, except these are the same kind of accounts that come out of every genocide and war in which civilians are targeted or considered expendable casualties, and however outraged people are, nothing ever seems to really get done.
Books as well done as this go a long way towards humanizing and keeping these sort of tragedies relevant and fresh, and might inspire more people to be more active in the future, when these sorts of things occur again...though I know that's a rather idealistic outlook. But I can hope.
All in all, this is a great book, easily recommendable. It's harrowing, it's quite sad, and a lot of the little triumphs become, in the end, bittersweet. There are moments where, I was reading, and simply came across something particularly effecting and turned my head to the side and kind of smiled in the same way you do when you receive terrible news, and simply couldn't look at the book.
But it's the sort of book you
won't be able to put down, and won't be able to forget.
I'd recommend reading the book before you delve into all the interviews, and stuff about Valentino Achak Deng, but his charity, which provides educational opportunities in Sudan, can be found
here.
After you've read it, you should really read Dave Egger's
essay on the writing of the novel. It's pretty fascinating about how the book evolved over time and the processes that went into writing it.
