Dave Eggers tells Achack's story much like you would hear it if you had befriended the Sudanese refugee yourself. this book is like a conversation with a good friend. you start where you are. "hello, how are you, i am being robbed at gun point". you move back to the begining. "this is where i am from, the world was dust, we knew it to be Sudan, there was no more". but, to explain the begining, and to get to the end, you often have laughs in the middle. "successful with women". eventually a life is woven infront of you, and somewhere along the way you become a part of the story.

it's just that i haven't had a conversation like this before, one that starts with a burglary in Atlanta, draws you back to a small village in soutern Sudan, and marches you in and out of Ethiopia, the jungles, the rivers, the lions stare, over the bodies, into the refugee camps, into love, out of heartbreak. this is a vast story. this is a story told unflinchingly by the best of humanity, told of the worse afflicition humanity can bring down. of one person who knows his story intermingles with millions of others.
this is about the Lost Boys, about the civil war of Sudan, of apparent caste systems and the invisible ones, about loss and grief, the physical and emotional distress that a body can handle, love, war, violence, learning to write in dirt, growing up, struggle, transformation, adaptation.

mostly this is a clear voice that has every right to be broken or twisted, but it is not, it remains even lyrical, humorous.

what i am left with is the word war, how small it is. like boy. these words should have thousands of letters in them to convey their impact, because i had no idea. you can hear these words and they might conjur one image. maybe two or three. but what Dave Eggers and Achack have done is paint a huge landscape behind three letters. murals upon murals in my head, and what is hung on them is so touching, so sickening and moving, such a story is told that you can't go back to where you were before. boy. war.

give me better words. give us a better world to match this boy.

this might be one of the most important books of our time. it is absolutley required reading.

Wow.

In the preface to What Is The What, Valentino Achak Deng says that he told his story to the author, Dave Eggers, over a period of years. Eggers captured Achak's tone and spirit so closely that I kept forgetting that the author was not the man who experienced the horrors of what happened in the Sudan. Some of the passages are fictional out of some necessity and that's why I guess the book can't be classified as a true memoir. Still, it is one of the most chilling and inspiring books I've ever read.

I am one of those people almost completely ignorant of what was going on in the world in the late 1980s and all of the 1990s. My kids were being born and I was busy raising them, working and coping with other unfortunate complications like my first husband's failing health. When I saw Hotel Rwanda I thought, how could I not know about this? This is like what Hitler did.

I feel the same way after reading this book. Achak was a small boy in a poor village in southern Sudan when war and terror arrived in the form of mhraleen, invaders from Khartoum. There was always unease between the Arabs of northern Sudan and the Africans of the south although in Achak's village, they traded freely and were friendly with each other. Achak's village was burned to the ground and he had to run for his life, not knowing if any member of his family survived.

He became one of the "Lost Boys" who walked in a group what became hundreds of refugee children across the Sudan and into Ethiopia first, then Kenya. Along the way, boys died from starvation, exposure and disease. The boy Achak saw other little ones carried off by lions. They were chased and strafed by the Sudanese army. Sanctuary consisted of poor, mean little settlements and it took a long time for Achak to learn what happened to his family and make his way to the United States.

Ironically (although after everything that happens to him I shouldn't have been surprised) the plane taking him to New York was scheduled to depart September 11, 2001. We all know what happened then.

He did make it to Atlanta at last...and after going through all the suffering and misery of his young years, he opens the door one day and his home is invaded. He is beaten and robbed.

That's not even half of it.

If I ever feel too sorry for myself and complain about my woes, I'm going to go back and read this post and remember what this man experienced.

I think everyone should read his story.

I take away from all that dense scholarship on one of my favorite books, William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, that it is not merely possible, but somehow inevitable, that the pursuit of truth depends on multiple layers of untruth. The characters of Quentin and Shreve, generations removed and thousands of miles away from the action of the main story line in Absalom, Absalom!, still hit upon an approximation of truth (that feels truer) not through Holmes-ian detective work, but through complex and contradictory layers of memory, innuendo, and—one could easily argue—sexual tension. What Dave Eggers achieves in the “novelization” and, no doubt, consolidation of Valentino Achak Deng’s incredibly moving life story—fleeing his war-torn village in Sudan at the age of seven, his trek to Ethiopia and refugee camps there and in Kenya, his eventual journey to the United States and the unique challenges life there poses—is just such an approximation of truth which, in its very telling, feels truer. One could disregard Eggers’ style as gimmicky, an unconventional faux memoir a la his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but to do so would be to dismiss the raw power of What Is the What. Just as we walk around our daily lives seeing everything through the prism of our experience, so too does Valentino. Beginning with a mugging in his own Atlanta apartment and continuing through his day of hospital waiting rooms and membership card-scanning at the local gym where he works, Valentino sees and experiences everything in his present day intertwined with the narrative of his epic journey for survival in Africa, rendered in haunting—and often-times humorous—ways. We know from the introduction that this is as close as Eggers could come to biography and we can read and accept that from him and Valentino. The work only gets stronger, the reality of what happened only truer, in other words, with each additional person Valentino’s story is shared with. Indeed this connection, between the subject of the book—Valentino’s story and the story of all of so-called Lost Boys—and us, the reader, is, in all its hyperbolic glory, the essence of humanity itself, echoed in the most calm and moving statement right there in the book’s final paragraph. “How blessed are we to have each other?”

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 Valentino (www.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 about 500 Sudanese boys living in the Valley). They all celebrate their birthday on Jan. 1 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 my 2100 square foot home with a fridge full of food, two cars, a happy and relatively healthy family, casually spending $4 for 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.

this story deserves more than dave eggers. I really wanted to learn more about Victor's life but it is so bogged down in very thin attempts to humanize the main pov without diving into the interesting topics, and rather focusing on the similarities to an american audience. so much of the book is spent building a voice over and over with the same motif (ha! english class!) in different settings/scenarios, but the main pov and surrounding characters have much more personality to give than their counterparts on the page. would not recommend, I am going to search for alternative media to learn more, because the story itself is worth knowing!! just not DE's version of it.

This is compelling story of Valentino Achak Deng and so many other children who were forced from their village of Sudan. The story of his life is told between altered time lines and is tragic yet hopeful. For fans of memoirs, historical fiction and non fiction I highly recommend this book. The history of “unrest” in Sudan was not only told through the eyes of a boy but explained in a thorough & understandable detail .
Www.valentinoachackdeng.org

Although written by Dave Eggers, it is a narrative account of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. It details the plight of the Sudanese refugees.

The story begins with Valentino being robbed in his American apartment as an adult. When he is knocked out by one of the thieves, he thinks back to his life in the Sudan. He then begins his story of his exodus at the age of seven, when he and thousands of other boys cross the desert by foot. Wild animals, guns, bombs, death, militia, and starvation constantly threaten the boys chance for freedom and survival. "Should we stop? I whispered as we ran. No, no. Run. Always run." But even if they survive the labyrinth of the desert, they must then find a country to host them so that war does not claim them.
Throughout his narrative account, the chapters sometimes resume back to his current state in America--stuck in a chair, a telephone chord wrapped around him while he is being robbed. I enjoyed his comparisons to being held captive in his own apartment to his turmoil in Sudan. While he could be whimsical and sarcastic at times towards his robbers, it was disheartening to hear the voice of the true refugee, "You would not add to my suffering if you knew what I have seen."

I highly recommend What is the What for anyone interested in historical fiction, cultural anthropology, and social behaviors. It is a story to savor and one that you will never forget.

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 well-edited 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 "part-true." But how much is true and how much is not? I'd like to believe it's 99% true, 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 made-up. 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 made-up 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 non-linearities, 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.

There’s a lot to discuss about this book, starting with the author, who is (and isn’t) Dave Eggers. Then there’s the subtitle, which informs us that WHAT IS THE WHAT (a novel) is also The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. So is it a novel or an autobiography? And who wrote it?

Luckily, all of this gets sorted out expediently in the foreword, which explains that Valentino Achak Deng is one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys,” who wanted to write a book about his horrific experiences in Africa and later struggles in America. But he didn’t consider himself a good enough writer for such a task, so a friend introduced him to Dave Eggers, a literary star with a strong social conscience and plenty of personal experience with hardship. (For more on this, check out Eggers’ memoir A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS.)

The collaboration between these two men worked incredibly well, and Achak’s story—as related by Eggers—is at once fascinating, appalling, and life-changing. I picked up the book after overhearing a conversation at a local grocery store: a female customer asked the man at the checkout counter where he was from, and when he said “Sudan,” she asked if he was a Lost Boy. He said yes, and the customer seemed impressed. But as the man bagged her groceries, there was an awkward silence. The woman didn’t seem to know what to say next. Then it was my turn at the cash register, and I could barely look the man in the eye. I knew just enough about the Lost Boys to know that they’d suffered unspeakable atrocities, but was pretty ignorant about the war in Sudan, the politics in East Africa, and the circumstances that brought the Lost Boys to America. I decided it was time to educate myself.

WHAT US THE WHAT probably isn’t a book you’ll finish in a day or two. For me, it needed to be digested in small doses; there were times when I had to put it down to ponder the insanity of human nature and the amazing resiliency of certain individuals. It’s also impossible to read without thinking of Hitler and WWII, and to know that these war crimes—not to mention the later genocide in Darfur—happened during my lifetime is far too disturbing to fully comprehend.

But WHAT IS THE WHAT is more than just an account of what happened. Because it’s told through the eyes of a person who lived through it, it’s also a coming-of-age story (but with details that make THE HUNGER GAMES look like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.) The book is officially deemed a novel, mainly because Achak was only about seven when his terrible journey began, and many names and events have mercifully blurred in his memory. But novelizing the story was also a good choice for literary purposes, because Eggers knows how to structure the narrative and keep the reader engaged. I also applaud his decision to have Achak tell his story (silently) to the various Americans he encounters on a particularly difficult day in Atlanta when he is robbed and beaten in his apartment.

I could go on, but a synopsis of this book doesn’t cut it. To get some sense of what happened to these Lost Boys—and what their lives have become—you really need to read WHAT IS THE WHAT. If for nothing else, I promise you’ll feel considerably less upset about your unfashionable winter boots, or that annoying guy at work, or those ten pounds you can’t seem to lose.

March 17, 2019

"What is the What" is a biography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the millions of people displaced during the civil war in Sudan. This novel is not tagged as a biography, but as a novel, because the narration is interlaced with fiction. The story starts with Deng living in the US and being robbed by two African-Americans at his home. He starts recollecting his past and the war as a way of screaming the story, even if only in his head, out into the world so as to make it heard.

The fictionalized premise where people are burgling his home feels a little weaker. However, his account of the war, running away from his village, and the description of seemingly endless walking while also starving for food and water for days together overshadows it. The description of hundreds of boys tearing into a dead Elephant’s flesh and eating it raw brings forth a vivid image of their starved, desperate condition.

Reading this book and knowing that such atrocities have happened not just in this part of the world, but elsewhere too brings forth a myriad of emotions. It is horrifying to realize that human beings are capable of subjecting fellow human beings to such cruelty. There is a sort of helpless anger at people in power who do not give a rat's ass about the populace that is actually affected by it all. I cannot fathom how easy it is for people to inflict such cruelty and not have it affect their conscience in any way. There is also a disconcerting realization that history seems to have not taught us anything and there are people who are are going through such harrowing experience even now. And a scary forethought of what might be in store for us in the future.

Update: March 22, 2019

The first part of the book speaks about the Lost Boys’ journey on foot from Sudan to Ethiopia while the second part speaks about their condition in the refugee camp once they arrive there. During the walk, the boys would dream up all sorts of colourful images of how they were going to live once they were done walking, but the ‘promised land’ turns out to be the other side of the river. The boys are disappointed, their expectations vanishing in a haze. Their only consolation is that they aren’t being persecuted anymore.

In the initial days at Pinyudo, the Ethiopian refugee camp, the refugees are slowly recovering; fishing, and searching for food anywhere they can. Eventually, aid from the UN arrives and their conditions improve. They aren’t starving anymore. They have a chance at a decent meal, a chance at becoming educated in a makeshift school at the refugee camp.

A terrible trait we human beings have is that we always resort to differentiating ourselves from others. This gives rise to a caste system within the refugee camp, with about sixteen thousand unaccompanied minors occupying the lower rungs of this system. These boys are exploited by those in the SPLA (Sudanese rebel army) to serve as their foot soldiers, exploited by those who are better off to do their odd jobs, often dangerous ones that involve going deep into the forest where the unfortunate ones are devoured by wild animals. Their routine allowed them very little time to do anything else besides school, training by the SPLA and doing odd jobs to the elders in the community, and all of this lasted until they were driven out from Pinyudo during a coup in Ethiopia.

Update: March 29, 2019

After being driven out of Ethiopia, the refugees live a nomadic life for about a year before settling in at a refugee camp in Kenya (Kakuma). The third part of the book describes the refugees’ life at Kakuma and the resettlement of the Lost Boys in countries like the US, Australia etc. Throughout the book, the protagonist speaks about misfortune following him everywhere he goes. So many unfortunate incidents happen to Deng that after a while, we too become wary of what might be in store for him. There are happy events too, such as him finding out his parents are alive and well after all, and his resettlement in the US after a lot of anticipation, where he starts a new life.

After reading so much of what he went through, it is a relief to learn that he’s doing well in life and that he’s helping with the betterment of his country by building schools and providing education to the children of rural areas in his country [1]. He’s even been made the minister for education [2]. His journey from being a Lost Boy to helping rebuild his country is an inspiring story. I am happy that I read it, and happy to give this book a 5 star rating!

1. http://www.vadfoundation.org/marial-b...
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa...

*** Excerpts from the book ***

This is the most heartbreaking piece of writing I've come across yet.


In the mirror of William K, I did not look well that day. My cheeks were sunken, my eyes ringed in blue. My tongue was white, my hipbones were visible through my shorts. My throat felt lined with wood and grass. Attempting to swallow caused enormous pain. Boys were walking with their hands on their throats, trying to massage moisture into them. I was quiet and we continued to walk. The afternoon was a very slow one. We could not walk at a pace near to what we had when the walk began. We were covering so little ground. This day, William K asked to stop frequently. —Just to stop and stand for a moment, he said. And we would stop and William would lean on me, resting his hand on my shoulder. He would take three breaths and say he was ready again. We did not want to fall behind.

—I feel so heavy, Achak. Do you feel heavy this way?
—I do. I do, William. Everyone does.

The afternoon cooled and the air was easier to breathe. Word came down the line that someone had found the carcass of a dik-dik. They had chased away the vultures and they were trying to find some edible meat on the bones of the animal.

—I need to rest again, William K whispered.
—We should sit for a while.

I did not agree that we should sit, but William K was already making his way to a tree, and soon was sitting beneath it, his head against the trunk.

—We need to walk, I said. William K closed his eyes.
—We need to rest. Rest with me, Achak.
—They’ve found a dik-dik.
—That sounds good. He looked up to me and smiled.
—We need to get some of the meat. It’ll be gone in seconds, William. I watched as William K’s eyes flickered, his eyelids closing slowly.
—Soon, he said.
—But sit for a second. This is helping me. Please. I stood above him, giving him shade, allowing him a few moments of peace, and then said it was time to go.
—It’s not time, he said.
—The meat will be gone.
—You get some. Can you get some and bring it back to me? God forgive me, I thought this was a good idea.
—I’ll come back, I said.
—Good, he said.
—Keep your eyes open, I said.
—Okay, he said. He looked up to me and nodded.
—I need this. I feel like this is helping me. His eyes slowly closed and I ran to get our share of the animal. While I was gone, the life in William K fell away and his flesh returned to the earth.

I had known William K since he was a baby and I was a baby. Our mothers had placed us in the same bed as infants. We knew each other as we learned to walk and speak. I could not remember more than a handful of those days that we had not been together, that I had not run with William K. We were simply friends who lived in a village together and expected to always be boys and friends in our village. But in these past months, we had traveled so far from our families, and we had no homes, and we had become so weak and no longer looked as we had before. And now William K’s life had ended and his body lay at my feet.

I sat next to him for some time. In my hand his hand became warm again and I looked into his face. I kept the flies at bay and refused to look up; I knew the vultures would be circling and I knew that I could not prevent them from coming to William K. But I decided that I would bury him, that I would bury him even if it meant that I would lose my place with the group. After seeing the dead and dying of the lost Fist, I no longer had any faith in our journey or in our guides. It seemed only logical that what had begun would continue: that we would walk and die until all boys were gone.
I dug as best I could, though I needed to rest frequently; the activity made me lightheaded and short of breath. I could not cry; there was not the water in my body to spare.

—Achak, come!

It was Kur. I saw him in the distance, waving to me. The group had assembled again and was leaving. I chose not to tell Kur or anyone that William K was dead. He was mine and I did not want them touching him. I did not want them telling me how to bury him or how to cover him or that he should be abandoned where he lay. I had not buried Deng but I would bury William K. I waved back to Kur and told him I would come soon and then returned to my digging.

—Now, Achak!

The hole was meager and I knew it would not cover William K. But it would keep the carrion birds at bay for some time, long enough so that I would be able to walk far enough that I wouldn’t have to see them descend. I placed leaves on the bottom of the hole, enough that he had a cushion for his head and there was no dirt visible. I dragged William K into the hole and then placed leaves over his face and hands. I bent his knees and folded his feet behind his knees to save space. Now I needed to rest again, and I sat, feeling small satisfaction in knowing that he would fit inside the hole I had made after all.

—Goodbye, Achak! Kur yelled. I saw that the boys had already left. Kur waited a few moments for me, and then turned.

I did not want to leave William K. I wanted to die with him. I was so tired at that moment, so bone-tired that I felt that I could fall asleep as he did, sleep until my body went cold. But then I thought of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, and found myself invoking William K’s own mythic visions of Ethiopia. The world was terrible but perhaps I would see them again. It was enough to bring me to my feet again. I stood and chose to continue walking, to walk until I could not walk. I would finish burying William K and then I would follow the boys.

I could not watch the first dirt fall on William K’s face so I kicked the first layer with the back of my heel. Once his head was covered, I spread more dirt and rocks until it bore some resemblance to a real grave. When I was finished, I told William K that I was sorry. I was sorry that I had not known how sick he was. That I had not found a way to keep him alive. That I was the last person he saw on this earth. That he could not say goodbye to his mother and father, that only I would know where his body lay. It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K.

Dave Eggers. What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

Valentino Achak Deng tells the story of his life through the words of Dave Eggers in What is the What. Since most of the happenings in the book occurred several years ago – the book is an historic novel based on actual occurrences. His story begins with the start of the over 20 year old civil war between the government of Sudan and the People’s Liberation Movement/Army. When his village is attached, Achak flees on foot and walks across Africa toward Ethiopia while dodging bombs, bullets and lions; while watching countless of his fellow refugees be eaten by crocodiles, blown up by land mines, or die from malaria; toward an unknown salvation. He does not know what became of his family, he does not know when he’ll eat his next meal, and he has no idea how many days he will live.

After Deng relates tragedy after tragedy he finally receives word that some of the boys will be relocated to safer countries. He imagines a place where he can receive a good education and earn enough money to start a family and return to Sudan to help rebuild after the war ends. But life is not easy for the Sudanese “lost boys”. Most were relocated without any money or possessions and were expected to exist in a very alien culture by working in the least desirable minimum-wage jobs. This resulted in the Sudanese relocation being called a “failed experiment.” From the book:

“We were the model Africans. For so long, this was our designation. We were applauded for our industriousness and good manners and, best or all, our devotion to our faith. The churches adored us, and the leaders they bankrolled and controlled coveted us. But now the enthusiasm has dampened. We have exhausted many of our hosts. We are young men and young men are prone to vice. Among the four thousand are those who have entertained prostitutes, who have lost weeks and months to drugs, many more who have lost their fire to drink, dozens who have become inexpert gamblers, fighters.

What is the What is Valentino’s attempt to get the story of the plight of his people out to the world in hopes that they money raised (all proceeds from the book will be used to improve the lives of Sudanese in Sudan and elsewhere) will benefit Sudan.

Ik heb getwijfeld tussen drie en vier sterren. Het verhaal is hartverscheurend en zou, zeker in deze tijden, door iedereen gelezen moeten worden. Alleen was ik niet zo hard onder de indruk van de manier waarop het is geschreven, waardoor ik het bij momenten moeilijk had om erdoor heen te geraken. Ik ben uiteindelijk blij dat ik ben blijven worstelen, en zo het volledige verhaal van Valentino Achak Deng heb gelezen. Dat ik door de ogen van een jongen uit Soedan naar de wereld heb kunnen kijken, ook. Dat alleen al was verbijsterend, bij momenten, los van wat er zich aan wreedheden in dat land afspeelt.

Fjoew.