Roos Van Rij Van Rij থেকে Kanang
I feel like the time it took me to read this book was longer than the actual second Sudanese Civil War, but that was officially from 1983-2005 so it probably didn't actually take me that long. This book is the autobiography -- but written by someone else -- of the nonfictional life story of Valentino Deng -- except it's a novel. Deng was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, a large group of young men that were abandoned and left to fend for themselves during a senseless civil war, traveling huge distances by foot and trying to survive unimaginable circumstances. Their story is simply amazing -- unfortunately, this book dehumanized their experience for me. The author of this book is Dave Eggers. If you like his other stuff, you'll probably like this. If you're not familiar with his stuff, imagine David Foster Wallace's writing style and then take away the sincerity and add in a little overdone self-consciousness. Actually, Eggers's writing can be enjoyable and pretty easy to read, at least in small doses. That's why this book took me so long to read: as soon as the tone of the text started to interfere with the story, I put the book down for a while. I couldn't get over the feeling that I had to stay on guard while reading this book. As soon as I would start to read something that began to really affect me, I couldn't help but ask myself: is this part of the biography part, or novel part? Did it really happen this way, or did Eggers just figure that it would illustrate a point? It's an unpleasant feeling to have, and it really interfered with my enjoyment of this book. As I said before, the story of the Lost Boys is incredible, and the book does describe some aspect of what it was like. I just wish it would have been written by someone telling their own story, instead of crafted into the type of story that the author imagined it should be.