What Is the What?

The protagonist of this book was in Memphis last week, speaking at St. George's Independent School.  A student's grandfather had heard him speak and paid for him to come visit the school.  The new Change the World book club had already selected What Is the What by Dave Eggers, and it's too bad we didn't know he was coming--we might have been able to arrange a visit here too.  Well, maybe next year.  Valentino Achak Deng is a real person who spent 17 years running and hiding in Sudan while horrendous wars and deprivation assailed him.  Then, when he was able to escape to the US, he was assaulted in his Atlanta apartment and robbed.  Since then he's been the subject of the Dave Eggers book (which is based on the truth but had to be written as fiction because of the impossibility of reconstructing a factual account of the details of Deng's childhood), and Deng has become a widely traveled speaker.  If you get a chance to read it, it might be one of those books that changes your view of the world. 

Update:  We postponed our meeting and are trying to see if more people will read it. It's hard to put down--funny, sad, and thought-provoking at the same time.