The universe seemed to be calling me out to read Dave Eggers' novel What Is The What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng.
During the holidays, and just within a few days of each other, we watched the movie Hotel Rwanda on cable... I received an e-mail from our local independent bookstore about a signing event for this book... which then posed the question in my head, "Where had I heard of this book before?"... and then I recalled that both Time and People had named it one of the best books of 2006 (and since it has been named as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize).
If you are trying to figure out the Hotel Rwanda connection, the book is about the genocide in the Sudan through the eyes of one of its "Lost Boys." So like the tragedies in Rwanda and not unlike the current one is the Darfur region of the Sudan.
So you may recall that I teased that I went to a book signing event without the author. This was the one. An overflow crowd at the bookstore had the privilege of meeting and listening to the real-life inspiration for the book... Valentino Achak Deng.
In this post-Frey memoir world, Eggers and Deng made the decision to make this a novel to allow some creative license (particularly since Deng is recalling events when he was a young child). However, any "fictionalization" takes nothing away from this work... even if Deng experienced even 5% of what was told in this book, it is far more than any human should have to suffer.
The story is primarily told through flashbacks with Deng (along with thousands of dubbed, Lost Boys) re-settled in the United States. We follow Deng as he is forced to flee his village after it is ravaged by rebels and walk hundreds of miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. If you think life got any easier "the greatest country in the world" you would be wrong. Ominously enough, Deng was scheduled to arrive in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001 (no creative license there, that was the truth).
It is quite a compelling read and very well-done. The New York Times called the novel " a startling act of literary ventriloquism." I have not read any of Eggers' works (that may be corrected), but I was amazed that I could hear Valentino's voice while reading this book. After years of interviews and other communication with Deng, Eggers quite accurately captures his tempo.
If you are wondering about the title of the book, it comes from a sort of Sudanese "Let's Make a Deal" folk tale. I am not giving anything away here... this story is told fairly early on in the book. God gives the Sudanese people a choice between cattle (the known) and the "what" (the unknown). This is a test. Will man choose to accept and appreciate what is being offered or trade it for something else? They choose "correctly" and accept the cattle... while you never hear regret and obsession over it, the question seems to hang out there... what would life be if they chose differently... what is the what?
2007 10K Reading Challenge: + 468 pages
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