What Is the What, Dave Eggers
What Is the What, Dave Eggers
28 Rating(s)
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What Is the What
The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng; A Novel

Author: Dave Eggers

Narrator: Dion Graham

Unabridged: 20 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/21/2013

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom.When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.“A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"An absolute classic. . . . Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression.” —People

About Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is the author of children’s fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, and more. His works have won the Newbery Medal, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and is cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds.

About Dion Graham

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Len on January 02, 2008

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......more

Goodreads review by Baba on July 28, 2022

Written in the first-person, this book started off as a captivating epic tale of a Sudanese boy's life, from Southern Sudan village life to genocide; from many hundred mile walks with others mostly boys, escaping for their lives; through to refugee status, through to resettlement in the US... with t......more

Goodreads review by Paul on December 16, 2010

TOO MUCH, AND NOT ENOUGH : A PARADOX With her open and confident sexuality, she was the constant igniter of everything flammable within us Hmm, 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?......more

Goodreads review by Lee on August 14, 2016

Nine years after this was published I've finally read it. Have meant to read it since loving Zeitoun a few years ago. Wife listened to audiobook on long commute and deemed it a truly heartbreaking work of staggering genius -- also proclaimed herself an Eggers fan after not being so into his memoir.......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie *Eff your feelings* on March 27, 2012

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......more

Quotes

“Told with humor, humanity, and bottomless compassion for his subject…It is impossible to read this book and not be humbled, enlightened, transformed.” Khaled Hosseini, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“[An] Astonishing story…of immerse power, emotion, and even in the midst of horror, beauty.” Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A book with the imaginative sweep, the scope and, above all, the emotional power of an epic. Intense, straightforward, lit by lightning flashes of humor, wisdom and charm.” New York Times Book Review

“A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” New York Times

“A moving, frightening, improbably beautiful book.” Time

“An absolute classic…Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression.” People

“A sweet and sometimes very funny story of one boy’s coming of age…Strange, beautiful, and unforgettable.” San Francisco Chronicle

“What Is the What is a story of real global catastrophe—a work of such simple power, straightforward emotion, and genuine gravitas that it reminds us how memoirs can transcend the personal to illuminate large, public tragedies as well…Exudes authenticity.” Washington Post

“As an emotional primer about the impacted recent history of the Sudan, about the fighting between north and south, government and rebels, Arabs and Dink, murahaleen and SPLA, Eggers’ ventriloquism could hardly be bettered. He makes Achak’s an authentic and affecting voice of the grimmest narrative of our times.” The Observer (London)

“[An] engrossing epic…Eggers’ limpid prose gives Valentino an unaffected, compelling voice and makes his narrative by turns harrowing, funny, bleak, and lyrical. The result is a horrific account of the Sudanese tragedy but also an emblematic saga of modernity-of the search for home and self in a world of unending upheaval.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Awards

  • Time Magazine Book of the Year
  • Independent Publisher Award
  • National Book Critics Circle Award
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Book
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