About this title: Based closely on true experiences of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who fled their war-ravaged country to come to the United States in the mid-1980s, this novel is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307385901ISBN:0307385906
Description: Fair + Paperback in fair + condition. There are some creases, a small tear on the top of the front cover, some edge rubbing, and alot of the pages have curles and creases, the book is still a good reading copy, [Satisfaction Guaranteed! ]. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007-10-09
ISBN-13:9780307385901ISBN:0307385906
Description: Very Good. Appears unread, clean pages, no spine or page creases, no writing, minor shelf-wear to cover including the beginning of corner peel on the front lower corner. read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 2007-10-09
ISBN-13:9780307385901ISBN:0307385906
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780307385901. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: San Francisco, McSweeney's
Date Published: 2006
Description: The third novel from Eggers. No statement of edition but likely a later printing in orange boards This one follows the real life of Deng although it has been fictionalized. A near fine copy that has a crack along the front panel where it meets the spine. Includes the original band for the rear with the publisher blurbs. Issued without a jacket and with illustrated boards. Signed on the title page by Eggers. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: softcover
Publisher: (McSweeney's), (San Francisco)
Date Published: (2006)
Description: The advance reading copy of this highly praised "nonfiction novel" based on the life story of Deng, one of the Sudanese "Lost Boys, " as told to Eggers, the author of the acclaimed memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and creator of McSweeney's, the highly regarded literary journal and publisher. With different cover art from the published book and with blurbs by Khaled Hosseini, Philip Gourevitch and John Prendergast on the rear panel. Slight splaying to covers; else fine in ... read more
Description: Good. Used-Good Sorry, CD missing. May contain highlighting/underlining/notes/etc. May have used stickers on cover. Ships same or next day. Expedited shipping takes 2-3 business days; standard shipping takes 4-14 business days. read more
Description: Fair. 0307385906 SATISFACTION GUARANTEED. ORDERS SHIP WITHIN 1-2 BUSINESS DAYS. MAY CONTAIN HIGHLIGHTING AND/OR WRITING. ALL USED BOOK ARE LISTED AS ACCEPTABLE BUT MAY BE GOOD/VERY GOOD/LIKE NEW. read more
"This is an eye-opening read even for people who feel up on current events. Valentino's (Achak's) experiences are horrific and his survival and spirit so pure and strong. Even through all the profound misery, Achak displays admirable character. Thank you, Dave Eggers, for writing his story."
"Billed as fiction, WHAT IS THE WHAT is actually the mostly-true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who had to flee his country as a young boy- walking hundreds of miles through desert, corpses, and human atrocities of a war torn country. Of course, Dave Eggers did a brilliant job in mimicking the voice of the real Achak, as they collaborated on this novel over the course of three years. The real strength of this book is how it is told without judgement and anger. Facts are given, and emotion is present, but it makes it easier as a reader to form one's own opinions and feelings.
The story is told in three seperate sections. In Book I, Achak is living in Atlanta and has just been brutually attacked by two thieves who have raided his apartment and stolen all that he has acquired during his time in the US. The first portion of his flashback to the Sudan is told while Achak waits, bound by cords, on the floor for his roommate to return home and help him.
Book II takes place while he is at the hospital awaiting care for his wounds from the attack. Of course, it is a hospital here in the good ol' US, so he gets one MRI over the course of a 14 hour wait before he walks out of the hospital (without treatment) at 3:45 am so he can be to work by 5:30. The flashback that occurs during this wait is an account of starvation, disease, and struggle in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, political issues enter into the mix, and he (along with thousands of refugees) are pushed out of the country violently.
The final portion of the book takes place while Achak is finally at work at a fitness club. He relates back to his experiences in the final camp that he lived in for about ten years, and his eventual flight to the United States, which happened to fall on September 11th, 2001. Needless to say, he did not get to America that day.
There is one horrific tragedy after another in this book, but it becomes more terrifying when it is recognized that these horrors occured while I was happily going about my life- pursuing an education, working without the fear of being harmed, and enjoying movies, travel, and relative peace. I spent time at the valentinoachakdeng.org website last night exploring the plight of this extraordinary man. All the proceeds of this book are going towards building a secondary school in Marail Bai, Achak's hometown in the Sudan as well as assisting the "Lost Boys" who have relocated in the US.
Again, I find myself wondering what I can do. Is it enough to throw money at a problem? Perhaps in lieu of doing more, that is the best that I can do...but, I wonder, is it enough?"
"You know who should read What is the What? Um...everyone. It's one of those rare books that are really easy to read, really gripping-it will grip you!-but also globally consequential.
What is the What, by Dave Eggers, is a docu-drama-type "novel" based on the real life of Valentino Achak Deng. At the age of seven (maybe eight) he watches his Sudanese village be attacked and destroyed by government-sponsored militia. Not knowing if his family is alive or dead, he's forced to run and ends up trekking (on foot with thousands of other boys) across the deserts of three countries. They walk for months, pursued by militiamen on horseback, government bombers and predatory animals, carrying with them almost nothing in terms of clothing, shoes, shelter, food or water. After this epic journey in which he faces down every imaginable hardship, Achak spends many years in desolate Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps before finally being resettled in the U.S. where he finds "a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges." (So lazy, I quote the back of the book)
I don't know if Valentino is the unluckiest person ever, or the luckiest for having survived a lifetime of horrors you and I could only conjure in our worst nightmares. But whatever he is, his story is extraordinary. This book is suspenseful, intense, horrifying, heartbreaking, at times surprisingly sweet and funny, but always incredibly moving - if you don't at least have the urge to make large donations to Mercy Corps after reading this, you're an absolute robot. I don't know if there's a word strong enough to sum up this guy's life - the tragedy, trauma, loss, deprivation - but it was crazy to read his story and know it had all really happened while I sat around watching Seinfeld and picking the onions off my cheeseburger.
Things that are really great about this book:
1. Eggers lays out the decades-old conflict in Sudan in a way that people like me who knew little about it can wrap their brains around. He weaves the history into his story really naturally and without ever making it a political invective.
2. The author drops the self-consciously clever post-modernist act and assumes the voice of Achak telling his story in first person. And outside of a few overly sophisticated turns of phrase, it works - sounds authentic and believable, as if it really were Achak telling his own story. Eggers does a terrific job of creating a "character" that is super lovable and pitiable but also respectable.
3. Despite the fairly devastating subject matter, What is the What is not depressing or the type of horrifying that makes you have to put it down. As a work of literature, it's incredibly impressive and I found myself reading on because I was wowed. And too, Eggers makes this young Sudanese so very human and real that I felt a strong sense of commonality, which made me not want to turn away from him. And the book ends on a rather hopeful note.
So I recommend this book to you and everyone you know. It really is amazing, definitely top 10 material. If you want to learn more about it or read a (way) more articulate review, visit McSweeney's Web site - they seem to have republished everything ever written about What is the What."
"It takes a certain and rare kind of writer to make a story about civil war, genocide, and a refugee crisis boring and unreadable; that writer, specifically, is Dave Eggers. It's not that I don't understand the purpose that this book serves - just as we import the Third World's raw resources to fuel our own material greed, so must we import their tragedies to break up the monotony of our lives. My question is - can't we get better books to do it?
First of all, the voice is terrible. At points it reads like a parody of an American trying to imitate an African (oh, wait, it is, although Dave Eggers has probably at least met some, so I don't know what his excuse is). Take the very first sentence: "I have no reason not to answer the door so I answer the door." What, did the Sudanese civil war rob fake-Deng of the ability to use pronouns? The language is stilted and formal in a very amateurish way, not at all the way a young man talks, and for no good reason.
Second, why is it that going through a capital-T Tragedy means that none of the characters are allowed to have personalities? This happens all the time in fiction about genocide. No one is allowed to be cowardly, or funny, or petty, or squabbling - everyone must be stoic and long-suffering, because they are Noble Victims, and that is how Noble Victims are supposed to act (in real life, many people who go through tragedy tend to develop dark, savage senses of humor, but you wouldn't know that from reading this). After all, you can only be a nuanced and articulated character if you grew up in the suburbs of America, preferably with an unhappy childhood and a substance abuse problem in college.
Third, Eggers' writing is just flat and boring. Take, for instance, Eggers describing an air raid:
"But the plane returned a few minutes later, and soon after, there was a whistle. Dut screamed to us that we needed to run but did not tell us where. We ran in a hundred directions and two boys chose the wrong direction. They ran for the shelter of a large tree and this is where the bomb struck."
That's it? One of the most intense and terrifying things that can happen to you in life, and this is the treatment it gets? The plane returned and soon there was a whistle? Eggers writes like he just wants to get it over with. Which I don't exactly blame him for.
There is a bit of unintentional humor - when, in the present story, Deng tells Americans that he's from Sudan, but not Darfur, they quickly lose interest, because Americans only care about the foreign trouble spots that are hip to care about. Dumb, trendy Americans! But the real joke, of course, is that concurrent with the Sudanese civil war was/is the one in the Congo, which dwarfs the Sudanese conflict in horror, body count, and anything else you can think of. But Eggers, along with the rest of the world, doesn't care, because it's messy and complicated, whereas in Sudan you have Good Guys and Bad Guys. Much easier to understand - and much easier to sell books about.
All that having been said, Eggers is a genius; just not a literary genius. He is a genius for pulling the ultimate bait and switch: take someone else's story and then become the hero of it. Because that is who the hero is here, Dave Eggers, even though he doesn't appear once in the actual plot. After all, young Valentino's story would have remained untold - if it were not for the Deus Ex Maquina of Dave Eggers, who tells it like no one else can. Remember Eggers' first book, "A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius?" That title wasn't cutesy and ironic, it was literal. That's what Eggers wanted to write, and now he's given you one. So what if the heartbreak is someone else's?
If you think I'm being too harsh, then ask yourself this: why didn't Eggers just write a nonfiction book, or a straight up biography of Deng? At points, I'm tempted to think that it's because he couldn't be bothered to do some basic research (i.e., the repeated references to "Darfurians"; "Darfur" means "The Land of the Fur," the Fur being the people that live there, so this is sort of like referring to Polish people as "The People From The Land of the Polish." Also, the 1997 death of Princess Diana for some reason seems to come in the plot well after the 1998 African embassy bombings). The answer is that Eggers needs to hide behind someone else's genuine suffering, because that defuses any criticism of his own lifeless, droning prose. Insult Eggers, and you're insulting the sanctity of the Sudanese Lost Boys' pain and suffering. Point out the platitudes that Eggers shovels out in lieu of the real questions, which generally do not have easy answers or any answers at all, and you're heartless and callow. It's not a hard shell game that Eggers plays here - but there is none better at it than him."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
