What Is the What cover art

What Is the What

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
More purchase options

What Is the What

By: Dave Eggers
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Get this deal

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £19.90

Buy Now for £19.90

Valentino Achak Deng is just a boy when conflict separates him from his family and forces him to leave his small Sudanese village, joining thousands of other orphans on their long, long walk to Ethiopia, where they find safety for a time.

Along the way Valentino encounters enemy soldiers, liberation rebels and deadly militias, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation. But there are experiences ahead that will test his spirit in even greater ways than these....

©2006 Dave Eggers (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks America Art & Literature Authors Biographical Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Biography Africa Middle East
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

"Read Dave Eggers. What Is the What - it's the best book of the year." ( Guardian)
"A remarkable book: harrowing, witty, wretched, delightful; and always compelling, always surprising." ( London Review of Books)
All stars
Most relevant
an important book from the versatile mr eggers. takes you to a world we saw on tv, and still do to this day

stunning

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This story is aching to be listened to. Somewhat apocryphal in places, it still gives a hardnosed look at the hope through a hard life as told through the eyes of a Sudanese refugee.

It is the first book that brought me to tears and made me laugh too.

Heartbreaking and Hopeful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A really intriguing story about the struggles of the lost boys in South Sudan. However, I find the story unsatisfactory told with many loose ends. Often too much time was spent on detail which added little to the story and at the same time some of the most harrowing points of the story felt rushed through an in authentic in their telling.

Important story, clumsily told

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.