What is the What by Dave Eggers (#18, Nonfiction/Fiction Blend)

I am notorious for checking out several books at once and then not having enough time to finish them all before they are due back. I don't know what possessed me to check this book out last September but I saw it in the new books section and I grabbed it. Sadly, I decided to read Tucker Max and Eragon over this delightfully moving story about an unlucky Sudanese refugee.

I don't think I had even started the book before I relinquished it back to the library the last time but one of the delivery drivers at work started reading it shortly thereafter and he kept telling me to read it. So I finally saw it again on the shelf, checked it out, and after bounding through The Amber Spyglass, I found myself tiptoeing through this novel that is both nonfiction and fiction, as it is the story of Valentino Achak Deng as told to Dave Eggers. 

This is quite an amazing read. I came into it knowing there would be horrible atrocities and perhaps this is why the small scales events haunted me more than the large scale events. I kept wanting Valentino's life to level out. I kept wanting the bad luck to end and to have him find a happiness here in the states. But perhaps that is an unrealistic view of the way the world works. The second half of this book is heartbreaking, even more so than the first half where most of the raw carnage takes place. Their life at Kakuma (a Kenyan refuge camp) is hard and horrible and sometimes without hope. It is hard to read about this, but I feel that everyone should probably read a book like this. I enjoyed learning about Sudan and I definitely have a new perspective on the things in my life after having read Valentino's story.