A Lost Boy Tells Sudan's Story

A review of: Dave Eggers, What is the What (San Francisco: McSweeney's, 2006). 475pp. $26.00. What is the What is a fictionalized biography of Achak, one of the Sudanese “Lost Boys” who moved from one refugee camp to another during the 1980s. Achak's observations of the actors in the Sudanese civil war challenge traditional American evangelical activist conceptions of that conflict. Achak's story also examines what it means to exist, suffer, and endure. While Catholic theology offered Achak comfort in the idea of suffering as a purifying process, Achak ultimately finds purpose in communicating suffering to other people. Through Achak, Eggers expresses faith in the power of words to give meaning, to define existence, to validate memory, and to compel action

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