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Now that was a lot of information. Too much.Valentino Achak Deng is one of the lost boys of the civil war in Sudan. He survived a genocide, walking from Sudan to Ethiopia where boys were getting picked off one by one by lions in the night. Crocodiles, vultures, dysentery, soldiers tying to blow him up, starvation, a car accident, and a robbery in Atlanta after being relocated to the US.Life has not been easy for Valentino. Yet he somehow keeps going with a positivity that is hard to believe. The...
A while back I'd slogged through the simultaneously compelling and and head-scratchingly-moribund epic "Acts of Faith" by Philip Caputo which dealt with the Sudanese Civil War (of the mid-1980s 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 far-superior "novel" "What Is the What" by Dave Eggers.I put quotes around novel...
TOO MUCH, AND NOT ENOUGH : A PARADOX With her open and confident sexuality, she was the constant igniter of everything flammable within usHmm, if this Sudanese refugee & now American Valentine Achak Deng can turn a phrase like that, how come he needs Dave Eggars to shape his book and cop the byline? Okay, maybe he can't, maybe those delightful sentences are pure Dave. So what about this:"I had feared for a long time that secretly Tabitha was well versed in the ways of love and that the moment we...
This was the most amazing book I've ever read. There were times I just wanted to put it down, some of the events were just too much to handle and I wondered whether it was worth being brought down to such dark depths. But even through the unbelievably sad and shocking things that happened to Achak, the narration is so incredible and personal. I couldn't stop reading, and I couldn't stop thinking about him. In the past few weeks that I've been reading this, Achak is always on my mind, he's with m...
ugh.... I had read Heartbreaking Work and did not enjoy it, but I thought I'd give Eggers another chance. I'm plodding through this book and have been since March. I'm sad about it, because I'm interested by the subject matter. Oh well, lots of people disagree with me, so "you don't have to take MY word for it!"
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 so-called 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 co-founded by he and...