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What Is the What.
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Publishers Weekly
Starred Review
Valentino Achak Deng, real-life hero of this engrossing epic, was a refugee
from the Sudanese civil war—the bloodbath before the current Darfur
bloodbath—of the 1980s and '90s. In this fictionalized memoir, Eggers (A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) makes him an icon of globalization.
Separated from his family when Arab militia destroy his village, Valentino
joins thousands of other 'Lost Boys,' beset by starvation, thirst and
man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia and
Kenya, where Valentino pieces together a new life. He eventually reaches
America, but finds his quest for safety, community and fulfillment in many
ways even more difficult there than in the camps: he recalls, for instance,
being robbed, beaten and held captive in his Atlanta apartment. Eggers's
limpid prose gives Valentino an unaffected, compelling voice and makes his
narrative by turns harrowing, funny, bleak and lyrical. The result is a
horrific account of the Sudanese tragedy, but also an emblematic saga of
modernity—of the search for home and self in a world of unending upheaval.
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