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What Is the What

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About this listen

Valentino Achak Deng is just a boy when conflict separates him from his family and forces him to leave his small Sudanese village, joining thousands of other orphans on their long, long walk to Ethiopia, where they find safety for a time.

Along the way Valentino encounters enemy soldiers, liberation rebels and deadly militias, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation. But there are experiences ahead that will test his spirit in even greater ways than these....

©2006 Dave Eggers (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks America Art & Literature Authors Biographical Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Biography Africa Middle East

Critic reviews

"Read Dave Eggers. What Is the What - it's the best book of the year." ( Guardian)
"A remarkable book: harrowing, witty, wretched, delightful; and always compelling, always surprising." ( London Review of Books)
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This story is aching to be listened to. Somewhat apocryphal in places, it still gives a hardnosed look at the hope through a hard life as told through the eyes of a Sudanese refugee.

It is the first book that brought me to tears and made me laugh too.

Heartbreaking and Hopeful

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an important book from the versatile mr eggers. takes you to a world we saw on tv, and still do to this day

stunning

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A really intriguing story about the struggles of the lost boys in South Sudan. However, I find the story unsatisfactory told with many loose ends. Often too much time was spent on detail which added little to the story and at the same time some of the most harrowing points of the story felt rushed through an in authentic in their telling.

Important story, clumsily told

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