Fans of Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius + You Shall Know Our Velocity) and/or readers who are looking for an inventive and powerful book should get ahold of a copy of What is the What which tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a member of the thousands-strong Sundanese Lost Boy diaspora. Eggers interviewed Deng and tranformed the interviews into a first person "autobiographical" account even though the book is billed as a novel. Eggers and Deng admit that certain aspects of the story have been reorganized and some moments amended for the sake of cohesion, but it is for the most part a very accurate account of Deng's 15 year survival of the Sudanese civil war by eventually travelling to Ethiopia and then to the U.S. in 2001. As moving a read as the book is, I was equally stunned to find out the following: "All of the proceeds from What Is the What will go to aiding the Sudanese in America and Sudan. Created and overseen by Valentino, the Foundation's first aim will be the rebuilding of his hometown of Marial Bai, in southern Sudan. Every purchase of the book constitutes a donation to The VAD Foundation." In addition to the altruistic task of starting several teen writing centers around the U.S. using proceeds from his first two books, it's so impressive to see an author take his work to the next level to actually improve the state of the world around him - Eggers is quite a guy.
You can read more at:
http://www.valentinoachakdeng.com/
http://store.mcsweeneys.net/index.cfm/fuseaction/catalog.detail/object_id/B769DBC1-5B6F-4EBC-83FF-777C21AF0F0B/WhatIstheWhat.cfm
