What Is the What

The title of this book is so bad, it worked as a deterrent as neither I, nor anyone I knew, would pick up the book after it came out. It is unfortunate as Dave Eggers' What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng is the kind of book that can change the way you see the world. The preface includes a note from Valentino Achak Deng, who states that though the book should be considered fiction, Eggers interviewed Deng over a period of several years to gather Deng's stories of his life in war-torn Sudan, how he and other boys walked to Ethiopia to escape and the time spent there and in Kenya in refugee camps, before his eventual arrival to America to capture the reality of Deng's life. And the way that Eggers unfolds the story makes the book very compelling. I'm not sure I would've devoured the book the way I did had Eggers told the story chronologically. Instead, we meet Deng as he is being attacked and victimized in Atlanta and slowly we are drawn back to Sudan, the two stories weaving in and out. It is a very effective technique to tell this incredible story, one that needed to be told. And though I still think the title is not the greatest, I now understand it as it is derived from a story that Deng's father told, a story that I loved and that encompassed the overall theme of the book--questioning the search for something better and the idea that mysterious other thing somehow has greater value simply because it is unknown. Yes, it could be better, but it could also be worse.

Dave Eggers (left) and Valentino Achak Deng (right)