What is the What by Dave Eggers - Book Review

What is the What is an astonishing, eye-opening, and heartbreaking book that defies classification. Once you’ve read it, the story of Valentino Achak Deng refuses to leave your mind. Even if you’re not familiar with the Lost Boys and their struggles to escape from war-torn Sudan, you’ll be drawn into this pseudo-autobiography. What is the What tells a devastating story but never plays for sympathy. Instead, the hope, complexity, and tragedy of the situation take center stage.

What is the What is a novel written by Dave Eggers and drawn from the real-life story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. The title comes from a local story about the reward of choosing what’s known over what’s unknown. As they flee the destruction around them, though, the Lost Boys are constantly forced to choose the unknown future of refugee camps and life in America.

What is the What describes the interminable walking, the militia and bombs, starvation and disease, lions and crocodiles that kill countless young boys as they attempt to find refuge in Ethiopia and Kenya. The obstacles of their journey are so astonishing and heart-breaking that you—-and they-—often wonder how they can go on.

Eventually many of the Lost Boys gain entry to the United States, and they form a vibrant community displaced across the country but constantly in touch by cell phone. Valentino ends up in Atlanta, adjusting to the fact that America offers its own evils and injustices. His past and present are masterfully interwoven through Valentino’s habit of mentally recounting his story to the different people he meets.

Reading Valentino’s horrifying story can make the mere act of reading a book feel frivolous. The power of literature, though, is to bring remote stories to life, forcing a reader to comprehend what newspaper stories cannot render real. Eggers is famous for his book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; that title could easily apply to What is the What.