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A staggering accomplishment from Dave Eggers. A fictionalized account of a real Sudan "lost boy," who comes of age in a merciless world.

Valentino Achak Deng is a man who's been beaten up by life, many times over. Born in Sudan before the second Sudanese Civil War, his village at Marial Bai was overrun by mercenaries hired by the Islamic government. He is forced, as a young boy, to escape across the country, becoming one of the Lost Boys of Sudan in the middle of the beginnings of the crisis in Darfur. And as a refugee, he is attacked by lions, disease, and the conflicts of his own people. Even after making it out to America, he struggles with identity, crime, and what it means to be a person in this modern, global world.

In short, he's got a story to tell. And What is the What is that story, told not by Deng-- although his voice and background is borrowed and embedded in every page-- but by Dave Eggers, a terrifically frank and fresh novelist.

Eggers, best known for his clever and moving autobiography A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, has spent hundreds of hours finding out Deng's story, even traveling back to Sudan with him to see the people and places he was forced to leave behind. As a result, the book is a clear, close-up picture of what is happening both in Sudan and to the people who are leaving it to come to America. Eggers passes the story back and forth between Deng's wartorn childhood in Sudan, and his modern life in America. But even in this country, violence hasn't escaped him-- the story begins with Deng being robbed in his own apartment, and as Deng sits tied up while strangers loot his possessions, he tells them, and all of us, his story.

And at every step, Eggers adds his own personal insight, and turns Deng's harrowing personal narrative into a tale for our times. We not only follow Deng on his journey through Sudan and its past and culture (he and his village are fascinated by a bicycle, and we hear his reaction to seeing a white man for the first time), but through a history of local and global politics involving Sudan and the world. We get to see Princess Diana's death from an Ethiopian perspective, and see how 9/11 looked from outside the country.

And perhaps most valuably, Eggers fills in the background on the current situation in Sudan and Darfur. Deng and his fellow Lost Boys are what his elders say is the future of his people, and so their troubles both with the government and the rebels there can be felt on his shoulders. There are no winners in a civil war, and even in the refugee camps, where relief organizations help as best they can (themselves sometimes tied up by bureaucracy and corruption), we clearly feel the tragedy and trauma that the situation over there creates.

But even though Deng has been through so much, Eggers recognizes the power that he has to get through it all. Neither he nor Deng ever shies away from the reality of being so hurt that living doesn't seem an option, but always Eggers brings us back. Deng continually shows a sense of wonderment in a world that can contain both Atlanta and his Marial Bai village. And Eggers shares his own wit and culture, sprinkled throughout the text in moments that are able to match the violent pictures between them. Together, they create not just a fascinating read, but an essential one.

Deng is a member of the Dinka tribe, and the title of the book comes from the Dinka story about the creation of the world. In the story, the Dinka were offered cattle by God, and the fertile land to keep and tend them. “You may have the cattle,” said God to the Dinka, “or you may have the What.” And though the Dinka chose cattle, and the land to live in and feed and grow them with, Deng's journey is in search of a question, in search of what his tribe didn't get by choosing that way in life. What is it that the Dinka missed out on? What, he asks all of us, is the What?


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