Walking Out of Hell: What is the What

By Bruce Collier February 8, 2007 Issue

What is the What is my first book by Dave Eggers, so I had no preconceptions about the author. Candidly, I am not entirely sure how much of the book is “real” and how much is fiction, and I prefer to read a book rather than about a book, before writing my opinion of it. It is described as a novel, and can be read as one. Novel or semi-documentary, What is the What is a narrative by one of the most compelling characters I have encountered in years, a young Sudanese named Valentino Achak Deng.

Valentino — like many refugees, he goes by a number of names throughout the book — flees as a child from his community in southern Sudan. His town is attacked by one of several contentious factions in what would become a decades-long civil war. Believing his parents have been killed, he and a group of youths begin a long trek, one they hope will take them to safety and a better life in neighboring Ethiopia.

What happens on the way strains credulity? The “lost boys,” as they come to be called, take what they have on their backs and march by the hundreds east across a ravaged wasteland of heat, thirst, starvation, disease, explosives, and animal attacks. Using simple, straightforward prose, Valentino tells of children killed by guns, mines, hyenas, lions, and crocodiles. There are human predators, too. The latter are looking alternately for slaves or recruits for their respective military bands. For sheer horror and tragedy, the boys’ journey makes The Grapes of Wrath look like a college road trip. This is some of the strongest stuff you may ever read.

What sets What is the What apart from just another war-is-hell story is that despite all he endures, Valentino never becomes bitter or selfish, and never gives up hope or loses his faith in God and other people. He is no sunny optimist; he just believes things have to get better. When Ethiopia proves as bad as Sudan, Valentino goes to Kenya, growing to young manhood in a refugee camp. From there, he makes it to the United States, living in Atlanta, where he becomes the victim of a home invasion robbery and beating. Strange as it may sound, his narrative contains a great deal of humor, even when describing his latest hard knock. He also has many observations on the fluctuating nature of both African and American compassion, charitable celebrities, and the maddening cultural peculiarities of his fellow Sudanese refugees.

Also happening along the way is Valentino’s maturity. He starts as a timid boy, and grows to make friends, discover girls, and learn about the outside world. We get an over-the-shoulder view of his first sight of a bicycle, a white person, cell phones, his first kiss, and an Atlanta Hawks game. The latter contains this observation:

“The music was the loudest I have ever heard in my life, and the spectacle of the stadium, with its 120-foot ceiling, its thousands of seats, its glass and chrome and banners, its cheerleaders and murderous sound system, seemed perfectly designed to drive people insane.”

What emerges is a fully drawn human being, the kind that claims the reader’s attention, his compassion, and finally his admiration and love. Engaging in what he calls the “theatrical” Sudanese passion for oral communication, Valentino tells parts of his story to everyone he encounters, “to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen,” including the little boy assigned to guard him, as he lies bound and gagged in his apartment after the robbery.

There are no “literary” flourishes or calls to social action in What is the What. The confusing politics of northern and southern Sudan are a web of clan and tribal quarrels, religious conflict, and economic competition, scarcely fathomable even to the perceptive Valentino. Eggers gives his unforgettable protagonist and his story center stage, allowing it wash over the reader. I rarely weep over fiction, but there were more than a few points when I had to lay this book aside, overwhelmed. I won’t spoil What is the What by explaining its title, but the meaning will not be lost. Eggers has a masterpiece here: an age-old story made completely fresh for a nation of immigrants.

What is the What, 475 pages, McSweeney’s. Available at bookstores, libraries and online booksellers.

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