What is the What

Author(s): Dave Eggers

Fiction

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino's travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)-the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.


Product Information

Dave Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity and How We Are Hungry. He is also the editor of McSweeney's, a literary journal and book publishing outfit, and the founder of 826 Valencia, a non-profit educational centre with nine locations in six cities. In 2004 he started the Voice of Witness, a series of books that use oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. All of the author's proceeds from this book will go to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation. Read more at: www.valentinoachakdeng.com.

General Fields

  • : 9780141015743
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : Penguin Books, Limited
  • : 0.374
  • : July 2008
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 33mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Dave Eggers
  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • : English
  • : FIC
  • : 560
  • : Modern fiction
  • : map