What Is the What by Dave Eggers audiobook

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng; A Novel

By Dave Eggers
Read by Dion Graham

Blackstone Publishing 9781932416640
20.49 Hours • Unabridged
Format : Digital Download (In Stock)
  • 3 Formats: Digital Download
  • 3 Formats: CD
  • 3 Formats: MP3 CD
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    ISBN: 9781482977066

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    ISBN: 9781602832626

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    ISBN: 9780792749165

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man. “A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "An absolute classic. . . . Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression.” —People

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Summary

Summary

A New York Times bestseller

A 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

A 2007 New York Times Book Review Notable Book

A 2006 Time Magazine Book of the Year for Fiction

Winner for the 2007 Independent Publisher Award for Literary Fiction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called Lost Boys—was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of seven and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom.

When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges. Moving, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny, What Is the What is an astonishing novel that illuminates the lives of millions through one extraordinary man.

“A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"An absolute classic. . . . Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression.” —People


Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“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
“[An] Astonishing story…of immerse power, emotion, and even in the midst of horror, beauty.” —Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“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)
“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)
“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 
“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
“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
“[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
“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
“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
“A testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” —New York Times
“A moving, frightening, improbably beautiful book.” —Time
“An absolute classic…Compelling, important, and vital to the understanding of the politics and emotional consequences of oppression.” —People
“A sweet and sometimes very funny story of one boy’s coming of age…Strange, beautiful, and unforgettable.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“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
“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)
“[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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Author

Author Bio: Dave Eggers

Author Bio: Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is the author of children’s fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, and more. His works have won the Newbery Medal, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and is cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download, CD, MP3 CD
Category: Fiction/Historical
Runtime: 20.49
Audience: Adult
Language: English

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