What is the What

This is the oral history of Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the Sudan genocide and now a political speaker and activist on the future of Sudan.

It follows Deng, in first person, flipping back and forth between the present and snapshots of the past as he tries to escape Sudan and America, both juxtaposed perfectly for the readership. There are occasions where Deng feels anonymous in America, ignored and forgotten, like he was as a Lost Boy in Sudan, and so he telepathically relays his story to a series of strangers throughout the book as he deals with the fallout of his house being burgled. We learn how he arrived at this point in America. We see his life in Sudan, quiet, peaceful before invaders tear apart his village. He spends the rest of the book on the run, exposed to horrors, strange men and women who want to care for him for nefarious purposes and the horrors that lurk in the jungles, before joining thousands of other Lost Boys walking, walking out of Sudan to Ethiopia where they hope to wait out the conflict and eventually return home.

He has to endure atrocity after atrocity without compromising decency, kindness, and hope for home and acceptance. This is a highly sensitive book, one I read in chunks, so rich and heartbreaking was its emotional core, so vividly descriptive and debilitating was its view of the horrors Deng has experienced. Eggers is sensitive to the source material and is able to tell the story in a moving and honest way, unflinching yet firmly rooted in the boy's experience and avoiding clunky political comment. This is a story of the human heart, of triumph over adversity, and of one boy's struggle to find his way home, wherever it may be.