Acquire Today O Que é O Quê Fashioned By Dave Eggers Disseminated As Paperbound

while back I'd slogged through the simultaneously compelling and and headscratchinglymoribund epic "Acts of Faith" by Philip Caputo which dealt with the Sudanese Civil War of the mids through today and ensuing humanitarian efforts while I wasn't terribly impressed by that novel, it did leave me with many questions about the situation in Sudan, many of which were addressed if not exactly answered by the farsuperior "novel" "What Is the What" by Dave Eggers.


I put quotes around novel primarily because it's not a novel in the classical sense of the term it's more a firstperson account from the very real Valentino Achak Deng as written by Eggers whose soleraison d'etre these days is to give a voice to the disenfranchised.
And, oh my goodness, what an account, If there was ever a story that makes a reader pause to assess his problems as meaningless piffles, this is the one.
Mr. Deng takes us down adecadelong rabbit hole of sheer horror, from fleeing for his life as his village is shelled first by helicopters, then by Arab murahaleen horseback raiders running for miles and miles with hundreds of other displaced "Lost Boys" looking for rumored humanitarian aid encampments across the borders of Ethiopia and Kenya, only to be decimated by famine, thirst, hunger, wild animals, random attacks and massacres then focusing on survival in the camps while being recruited to go off to a totally unwinnable war against the ruling regime in the capital city of Khartoum.
It would seem like it would be the bleakest reading experience imaginable slogging through the travails of Mr.
Deng's life, but there is an amazing undercurrent of optimism that buoys the nonstop negativity, and makes it more a fascinating portrait of a fascinating life than the total bummer it could've been.
It helps that the recollection is broken up by presentday musings by Mr, Deng after he is selected to come to the United States and tries to cope with a completely different set of ordeals in adjusting to living in Atlanta, GA.
Even the most jaded, surly curmudgeon would be hardpressed not to be moved by this guy's plight.


One could argue that Eggers pseudoautobiography is shamelessly manipulative, If I think about it for too long I might possibly agree with that statement, but for now I think I'd rather give this bookand let you decide for yourself whether Eggers' story is one worth reading.
While it doesn't answer many questions, it does bring to light the very serious and dire situation in Sudan that evidently goes on to this day and if that requires some heartstring pulling, so be it.


HIGHLY recommended, If you know me at all, you know I read a lot, So I don't take these reviews lightly, Here goes: What is the What is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!

The story of Valentino Achak Deng, a socalled Lost Boy of the Sudan, is so moving that after reading the book I went to his web site and signed up for information on how I can help the cause.
Dave Eggers, who is easily one of my favorite fiction writers, has donated the proceeds of the book to a foundation cofounded by he and Valentino sitelinkwww.
valentinoachackdeng. org.

The writing is brilliant and the story is compelling, . . but I think what makes the book so great for me is the sheer tragedy of this boy's life and the unbelieveable sense of courage and optimism he showed throughout a life that would have caused most people to simply give up.
Valentino's courage is beyond belief, As his story unfolds, it's unimaginable that he could have survived and it's heartbreaking how at each turn things continued to get worse.
His survival is a mystery that will never be solved, . . yet here he is as a young adult doing everything he can to help the world learn from his experience.


The book was also a great history lesson about Sudan and Africa in general and gives the reader great insight into the troubles in Darfur today.
If the world does not learn from this story then perhaps we are doomed as a species.


Finally, though the story is Valentino's, the writing is all Eggers, He could have easily played the story as a straight biography, but instead Eggers weaves Valentino's life together in a beautiful way going back and forth between his time in Africa and his new life in Atlanta.
And while his life in Africa was indeed a horror, his life in the U, S. is not much better and perhaps the biggest lesson of the book we have tried to help these Lost Boys but we are far from perfect and have made many mistakes as a society.


It's ironic that this morning I awoke to a front page story in the Arizona Republic about a birthday celebration for Arizona's Lost Boys there are aboutSudanese boys living in the Valley.
They all celebrate their birthday on Jan,because they have no idea when they were really born,

It's also ironic that I finished this book around the same time as I saw The Kite Runner.
When I read The Kite Runner, and even Hosseini's second novel A thousand Splendid Suns, I thought life was terrible for the Afghans but Valentino's real story makes the fictional story of the boys in The Kite Runner seem tame by comparison.
But together these stories make me feel both lucky to live in America and at the same time ashamed that the world can let things like this happen.


As I sat reading Valentino's story on my sofa, I thought here is a boy who has experienced things I couldn't even imagine, while I sit in mysquare foot home with a fridge full of food, two cars, a happy and relatively healthy family, casually spendingfor a cup of coffee and throwing out more food each day than Valentino ate in a month.
It reaffirms my political views and teaches me to be thankful for what I have and more importantly that I have a profound responsibility as a citizen of the world to help those who are less fortunate.
If you think that makes me a bleeding heart liberal than I'm proud to wear that badge.


Read this book, It will change your life, Does truth matter Does the difference between fact and fiction matter

Purportedly there is a guy named among other names Valentino Achak Deng, and Dave Eggers wrote what you might take to be a transcribed and welledited autobiography of the man and his amazing, tortured journey as a child refugee of the Sudanese civil war.
It's a spellbinding story that's beautifully written and deeply moving,

Only it's not tue, It's fiction. It's not authored by Deng, it's authored by David Eggers, Or is it fiction Is it true How shall we know

Deng in words more "his own" than all his other words in the the text introduces the book by explaining that Eggers is somehow using fiction to tell the truth, and that most of the things the book says happened actually happened, and the rest happened to other people.
So it's not exactly real, except it is, And Dave is a nice guy, so it's okay,

This is very slippery stuff, Especially as, later in the book, Deng or Eggers takes pains to explain that he never once stretched the truth in order to woo aid agencies or charitable hosts.
Oh no, not him.

Now, I'm willing to believe in the story of Valentino Achak

Deng his exodus from Sudan, pursued by lions and soldiers, his life in dusty refugee camps on the edge of Ethiopia, his travel to America and subsequent suffering at the hands of burglars, of his bravery and fortitude in the face of all this trauma.
I would have no question that it's all shatteringly, edifyingly true, except that I've already been told explicitly, by author and subject, that this is a work of fiction.


Perhaps it's "parttrue, " But how much is true and how much is not I'd like to believe it'strue, because I long to believe in the human goodness and valor of Valentino Achak Deng, but what unqualified evidence is offered I'd like to believe that my favorite parts of this book are the factual ones, and the dull ones are more madeup.
But really I don't know, For a book that strives, so very hard, to explain and involve the reader in a deep, terrible and important set of truths the wars of Africa, their causes and effects, their human toll this caveat is crippling.
It's like a bottle of medicine labeled "not for illness, " It's a promise made with crossed fingers,

So go ahead, read it, enjoy, it's a great book, But please spare me any rationalization that fiction is the new fact, or that because madeup episodes happen to be more amusing than life they are somehow more deeply truthful than the truth.
If even half this book is true, then the truth should have been enough,

I believe that truth exists, and is knowable and important, We dismiss it at our own expense, Sure, all biography is salted with fiction, tall tales and handwaving over the unknowable parts, But to declare such an important biography to be fiction at its outset, and then at the end of the book to solicit donations for the eponymous foundation of Valentino Achak Deng, without even a hint of a promise that the author has spoken the truth It doesn't wash.


Now, we all know how much Dave Eggers enjoys annotation, footnotes, concordance and all such nonlinearities, not to mention esoteric typesetting projects.
Therefore: shall we petition him for a Red Letter edition of What Is The What All the words spoken by Valentino Achak Deng can be printed in red, and all of Dave Eggers' embellishments set perhaps in a nice mauve.
Then and only then the reader could attempt to know the difference between Deng's truth and Eggers' fiction, appreciate them both for what they are, and apportion appropriate gravity to each.
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