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  • What Is the What

  • By: Dave Eggers
  • Narrated by: Dion Graham
  • Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (39 ratings)
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What Is the What cover art

What Is the What

By: Dave Eggers
Narrated by: Dion Graham
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Summary

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
Biographical Fiction Literary Fiction
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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)

What listeners say about What Is the What

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stunning

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

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  • O
  • 10-03-19

Heartbreaking and Hopeful

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.

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