'Lost Boy' Valentino Achak Deng found refuge from Sudan's civil war in Atlanta,  but this story opens with him tied up on the floor of his Georgia apartment, gagged and unable to negotiate with the thugs who are robbing him. As the intruders tape his mouth shut and turn up the TV, Deng silently tells his stories of survival in an internal monologue that is the narrative line of this book. Whenever he feels slighted by God or made to feel like a piece of furniture by thoughtless Americans, Deng asserts his humanity by recounting his stories. As long as you listen to Deng's voice, you will feel like you are sharing the weight of the long and inexplicable tragedy that has followed the young Dinka people of southern Sudan for decades.

In a Dinka creation myth, God gives man the choice between cattle, which provide a sustainable existence, and the What. The What is the unknown — and all the accompanying trepidation, expectation, and ecstatic possibilities. This autobiographical novel is Deng's story of the What. It is what lies ahead of each step of the 'Lost Boys,' as they dream of bowls of oranges on clean tables. It is the deceit that encroaches on their refugee camp in Ethiopia and their sense of purposelessness as they wait to return home. It is the answering of life with more questions and doubt — endlessly promising and ceaselessly terrorizing. In short, it's the life of a refugee.

Eggers takes a risk by displacing Deng's voice with his own highly stylized writing, by using a rigid structure of trading back and forth between Deng's epic African adventure story and his loaded status as a poor black man living in Atlanta, all told in the second–person. But it's Eggers' choice to fictionalize Deng's story that reminds us of the power of storytelling, albeit its exaggerations, daydreams, impossibilities, and devices. Eggers' clear message, as realized by Deng when he has finally caught us up to the present, is that to not tell the story — the facts and the What — would be "less than human," would leave Deng with too little to survive.

-McKay McFadden