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“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
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“[An] Astonishing story…of immerse power,
emotion, and even in the midst of horror, beauty.”
— Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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“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
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“A testament to the triumph of hope over
experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.”
— New York Times
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“A moving, frightening, improbably beautiful
book.”
— Time
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“An absolute classic…Compelling, important, and
vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of
oppression.”
— People
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“A sweet and sometimes very funny story of one
boy’s coming of age…Strange, beautiful, and unforgettable.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“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
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“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)
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“[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)
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“Reworking this
powerful tale with both deep feeling and subtlety, Eggers finds humanity and
even humor, creating something much greater than a litany of woes or a script
for political outrage. What Is the What does what a novel does best,
which is to make us understand the deeper truths of another human being's
experience.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“An excellent audiobook…Reading in a clear,
convincingly expansive African cadence that is a pleasure to the ear, Dion
Graham sounds all the right notes of bewilderment, fear, discovery, mirth, and
joy in Valentino’s coming-of-age in the Kakuma refugee camp and his abrupt
exodus to the land of plenty, catching both the otherness and the universality
of his experience and providing a compelling personal window on an ongoing
global tragedy.”
— Library Journal (audio review)
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“What Is
the What is a novel that possesses the best qualities of a documentary
film: the conviction of truthfulness and the constant reminder of the
arbitrariness of fate, for worse and for better. By setting his story of
African annihilation and survival as a story of American immigration, Eggers
ensures that it belongs to us all, as it must.”
— Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
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“Dave Eggers has done something remarkable with
this book. He has managed to cross many barriers both real and artificial to
tell the story of one man’s tragedy and triumph in a way that emphasizes his
simple humanity above the drama of his terrible situation. It is a book that
shows there is no reason why geographical and cultural divides should prevent
us from attempting to understand each other as citizens of this world.”
— Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation
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“I have been interacting with the Lost Boys
since the late 1980s, from the time they were first displaced in Sudan to their
arrival in the United States. I thought I had heard and seen it all. But
reading Valentino’s story has touched emotions in me I didn’t even know I had.
Dave Eggers tells the story of Sudan through Valentino’s eyes, but he also
elucidates the best and worst of our common humanity.”
— John Prendergast, International Crisis Group
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“[Eggers] is as adroit
at telling another person’s biography as he is narrating his own…Labeled as a
novel, this work nonetheless has a historical basis and lends a personal face
to the brutality of civil war, squalor, and the struggle for survival…While visceral
and heartrending, Deng’s and Eggers’ joint story is ultimately a powerful tale
of hope. When both People and the ever-glum Michiko Kakutani of the New
York Times rave, how can one resist?”
— Bookmarks
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“Eggers writes smoothly and never seems to
interfere with the message of his subject. No one who reads this book will
forget its scenes of acute suffering and the triumph of the human spirit.”
— Kliatt