Dave Eggers

One Book, One Philadelphia Kick-Off Lecture with Dave Eggers, Tue., Jan. 8, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, library.phila.gov.

by Patrick Rapa

reading/lecture

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

If it weren't so real, you might not believe Valentino Achak Deng's life story, as recounted in Dave Eggers' novel What Is the What. Just 6 years old when his southern Sudanese village is torn asunder by civil war, Deng becomes one of the now legendary Lost Boys, surviving starvation and thirst, kidnapping and murder, confusion and exhaustion while walking to Ethiopia. Only a bit of cunning, some timely kindness from strangers and pure, random luck keeps the kid from dying in the desert like so many others. There's heartbreak and tragedy on every page — just when you think things can't get much worse for the weary refugees, a lion or a helicopter appear from nowhere — and yet the mere fact of young Deng's continued existence in a world so senseless and violent is enough to give you a kind of hope for him, for everybody.

Informed by interviews and correspondence, Eggers wrote What Is the What from Deng's perspective and expertly eschewed his own celebrated cleverness for more sober and selfless storytelling. Though the events inside mostly predate the current crisis in Darfur, What Is the What's selection for this year's One Book One Philadelphia should nonetheless help draw attention to something we as Americans rarely admit: We should be doing more to help.

One Book, One Philadelphia Kick-Off Lecture with Dave Eggers, Tue., Jan. 8, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, library.phila.gov.

Next week, City Paper will begin a three-month series of interviews with Sudanese refugees living in the Philadelphia area.