its the fictionalized biography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who was a kid when the civil war in Sudan broke out. In the preface, he writes that while "I was very young when some of the events in the book took place, and as a result we simply had to pronounce What is the What a novel. ... However it should be noted that all of the major events in the book are true." who knows how much is real and how much isn't, but certainly the heart of the story is centered in very true events.
It's taken me a few months to read with a slow draw in, but once I hit a point, I was pretty hooked. Last week I hit one passage in the book that made me fall in love with it. For these two pages, I could declare among my favorite books. Certainly its only in the context of the other 600 pages, that these pages matter. After experiencing one personal devastation after another, he speaks about trying to find trying to find comfort in God and prayer. "These authors, for whom I have great respect, still do not seem to know the doubts that one might have in the angriest corners of one's soul. Too often the tell me to answer my doubts with prayer, which seems very much like addressing one's hunger by thinking of food." There is something about the acknowledgement that as much as we try and hope to believe in God's greater good and purpose, to be comforted by wise words about the hope of resurrection after death - it is not always enough, sometimes not even close. i think it is the acknowledgement of the depth of the struggle, that speaks to the true depth of the faith.
He ends this section with this line, which I just spoke of incredible inner strength. "Achor Achor has been worried about me, but he has seen me improve. He knows I have been here before, that I have approached the precipice of self-termination and have walked away."
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