What Is the What (Joe)

I can't put this strongly enough: What Is the What is an absolute must-read.

Reviews and such here.  The novel, written by Dave Eggers, is the fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.  As a six (or so) year old in Marial Bai, a small Dinka village in southern Sudan, Valentino's life was forever changed with the the outbreak of the Sudanese civil war in 1983 (a peace treaty was signed in 2005 in Nairobi, which is-- for now-- holding, although of course there is now the situation in Darfur).  Marial Bai was destroyed; Achak and the other Lost Boys (those who survived; death was frequent) walked to Ethiopia; Ethiopia ceased to be hospitable and the Sudanese were forced to flee, first back into Sudan, then to Kakuma, a refugee camp in Kenya.  Finally he made it to Atlanta in 2001, where he took many courses at a community college.  This part is not in the book: finally this fall he was able to enroll in a four-year college (Allegheny College in Pennsylvania).

All income from What Is the What is going to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, to aid the Sudanese in the United States and Sudan.  But that's not why I'm saying "get the book"; it's a powerful and well-told story, worth reading both because it's true-- roughly speaking-- and on its merits as a novel.

Related links: Ten Things You Can Do for Sudan; Valentino Achak Deng (official website / foundation).

Comments

[Ruchira Paul]

I will ask my book club members if they want to read the book.

Here is a disturbing study showing how the human mind is able to shut itself out when it comes to genocide or other widespread death and destruction.

[Joe]

Interesting. That's probably something that we've all known on some level; Stalin unfortunately wasn't wrong when he said "one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic." But it's good to see that science is looking at that problem now.