What is the What by Dave Eggers

This was a special book. I am an unabashed Dave Eggers fan; he is one of the few authors whose books I look forward to prior to their release. This book is a fictionalized account of the journey one of the "lost boys" of Sudan across Sudan and ultimately to Atlanta, Georgia. Valentino, the protagonist, is one of thousands of young boys who walked across Sudan during the country's Civil War. The book alternates between present time in Atlanta, and his childhood in Sudan.

Strangely, Eggers and Valentino position the book as a novel, not as a biography. Given how broadly Eggers interpreted his own life in A Heartbreaking Work... and still called it nonfiction, that this was considered fiction was a surprising choice. Valentino explains it in the preface:

"This book was born out of the desire on the part of myself and the author to reach out to others to help them understand the atrocities many successive governments of Sudan committed before and during the civil war. To that end, over the course of many years, I told my story orally to the author. He then concocted this novel, approximating my own voice and using the basic events of my life as the foundation Because many of the passages are fictional, the result is called a novel."

Voice is probably the most impressive aspect of the book. Often while I was reading, I forgot that it was not written by Valentino. Given that English is not Valentino's first language, it is hard to believe that there is not a little bit of Eggers in the voice. However, I did hear an interview with the two of them where Valentino remarked that he was amazed that Eggers captured his voice as well as he did.

The Eggers/Valentino team portrayed certain events with amazingly succinct descriptions. I was impressed by how effectively Eggers combined a short episode with an emotion. As the reader, I was easily led through Valentino's range of emotions: most notably, fear, grief, anger. The following scene took place during the boys' march across Sudan.

"Deng walked behind me, insisting on holding my shirt. This was a practice favored this night and on later nights by the youngest boys--holding the shirt of the boy ahead. Deng and I were certainly among the smallest of the walking boys. The most accommodating boys would remove an arm from its sleeve and allow those behind them to use the sleeve as a leash. Many boys did this with their younger brothers. There were many pairs of brothers in the group, and in the morning, when roll was called, when I heard their names called I felt such envy. I knew nothing about my brothers now: whether they were alive or dead or at the bottom of a well."

And this episode occurred once he was living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia:

"More boys arrived every day, families too. Every day I saw them crossing the river. They came in the morning and they came in the afternoon and when I woke up more had come in the night. Some days one hundred came, some days many more. Some groups were like mine, hundreds of emaciated boys, half of them naked, and a few elders; some groups were only women and girls and babies, accompanied by young SPLA officers with guns tied to their backs. The people came without end, and each time they crossed the river, we knew it meant that the food we had would need to be further divided. I came to resent the sight of my own people, to loathe how many of them there were, how needful, gangrenous, bug-eyed, and wailing.

One day a group of boys threw rocks at a group of new arrivals. The rock-throwing boys were beaten severely and it never happened again, but in my mind, I threw rocks, too. I threw rocks at the women and the children and wanted to throw rocks at the soldiers but I threw rocks at no one."

Eggers and Valentino do no less of a superb job describing Valentino's life once he makes it to the U.S. Several months ago, I saw a movie called "Lost Boys of Sudan" at a local theater, then met a few of the men who had immigrated here. The theme of that movie, mirrored in this book, was that while moving to the U.S. certainly got the boys out of danger and offered them many opportunities they would not have otherwise had, it was an extremely difficult transition.

Many of the "lost boys" had minimum wage jobs, difficulty adjusting to school, unfriendly neighbors, and a life-long culture shock. The structure of the book, juxtaposing this life with his life in Sudan, succeeds in demonstrating the different universes of suffering and how experiencing a small injustice after a large injustice does not make it any more just.

In one passage, Valentino says:

"The thought of all that time wasted, so much time sitting on that wooden stool, cataloging, smiling, thanking, filing--all while I should have been in school--is to much for me to contemplate."

"I was taking home less than $200 a week after taxes," he comments, "I knew men in Kakuma [Ethiopia] who were doing better than that, relatively speaking, selling sneakers made of rope and rubber tires."

I realize there are a lot of quotations in this entry, but the writing in this book was really special. One thing I did not mention is that it's funny, too. There are laugh-out-loud moments, and a drifting sardonic internal monologue that found humor in tragedy. Finally, Eggers did a wonderful job structuring the book so it had an ending. Since Valentino is still living, I was pleasantly surprised to feel some amount of closure (albeit mixed with curiosity) upon finishing the book.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and learned a lot, too.