What is the What

by Dave Eggers

Separated from his family, Valentino Achak Deng becomes a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan. His travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)—the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Based closely on actual experiences, What Is the What is heartrending and astonishing, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy and, finally, triumph.

(From publisher)

Dave Eggers grew up close to Chicago and attended the University of Illinois. He is the author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), the novel You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002), the story collection How We Are Hungry (2004), and the novel What Is the What (2006). In 1998, he founded McSweeney's, an independent book-publishing house in San Francisco.
His fiction has appeared in Zoetrope, Punk Planet, and The New Yorker. He has recently written introductions to new editions of books by Edward Wallant, John Cheever, and Mark Twain.