Words At Large

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“A startling act of literary ventriloquism” is how one critic described Dave Eggers’s latest novel, based on a real-life figure. In What Is the What, the prolific writer, journalist and founder of the influential magazine McSweeney’s writes about Valentino Achak Deng, one of the so-called Lost Boys of the Sudanese civil war. The child survived armed militias, lions, starvation and disease, and eventually was resettled in the United States.

Eggers is best known for his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Vintage), a memoir with fictional elements. It focused on the author's struggle to raise his younger brother in San Francisco after the sudden death of their parents.

Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Dave Eggers last year when he was in Toronto. He discusses What Is the What and his involvement in the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which is raising funds to help rebuild a school and library in Deng’s village and to aid Sudanese refugees in the U.S.

First aired January 4, 2009 on Writers & Company. [runs 52:00]

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