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American memoirist Dave Eggers has created a compellingly intimate portrait of war-torn Sudan in What Is the What, the semi-fictional autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Valentino is one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, displaced at age seven when his village is destroyed by pro-government militias at the onset of the Second Sudanese Civil War, and subsequently forced to cross vast stretches of desert on foot to reach freedom beyond Sudan’s borders. Beset by constant dangers and often close to starvation, Valentino and the thousands of other boys who accompany him on this epic trek are a moving testament to the powers of human endurance in the face of nearly insurmountable hardship. In writing this book Eggers drew heavily on the memories of the real-life adult Valentino, now living in the United States, and in an impressive feat of authorial sleight-of-hand he almost succeeds in convincing you that the narrative voice in the novel is Valentino’s own.