Books : What Is the What (Vintage)

Rating: - WOW!!
This book is amazing. It gives a really good explanation of the crisis in Africa. I love this book and highly recommend it!!!

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Rating: - Inspiring and compelling
I couldn't finish Eggers's other big book ("A Heartbreaking Work..."), but a colleague recommended this novel, so I decided to take a chance on it and was glad I did. The remarkable and true (though novelized) odyssey of Valentino Deng, one of the generation of Sudanese "Lost Boys," makes for compelling reading as we cross Sudan with Deng and his peers through hazard after hazard (thirst, starvation, animal attacks, gunship attacks). I like that kind of book where a lion eats some of the characters and a crocodile eats some others. (I won't tell you which.) I'd probably give it five stars except that the last third, where the survival stakes are not as high, loses steam. Still, this book prevails as an inspiring survival story.

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Rating: - Enjoyable juxtaposition
I really enjoyed the way that Eggers is able to contrast the kinds of difficulties that exist across very different cultural experiences. It seems very illogical that the young men who had survived through the kinds of death and destruction that reigned in their homeland could come to a place like the United States and face challenges that often end in similar tragedy, that difficult obstacles exist no matter what the environment and wrong choices can end in disaster whether in a refugee camp or in an Atlanta apartment. How can you survive famine, lions, the SPLA the thugs of Khartoum only to fall victim of random crime in a so-called civilized, Western country? But when it happens it is only the beginning. The story is very much Homer's Oddysey without a home to come back to and with only an outside chance of creating one in a new place. Heartbreaking yet hopeful.

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Rating: - What is the What
The book is a captivating story of one lost boy's journey. It is at times funny, sad, heartwarming. The reader adds a dimension of accessibility and warmth that makes the whole experience wonderful. I highly recommend it.

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Rating: - I had no idea how uninformed I was
This book opened an entire world unknown to me, I absolutely adored this book for the gift of knowledge it gave me. After reading this I went directly to the National Geographic website and ate up anything and everything I could on Sudan, I then went to Valentino's website and donated what I could for the schools he is building. Never has a book moved me so much. This pairing of minds could not be a better match, I am elated these two men were brought together to tell such an important story.