First Year Book 2009

The Office of Undergraduate Studies is pleased to present all new students with a copy of What Is the What by Dave Eggers. A novelized biography of a real Lost Boy, Valentino Achak Deng, the book chronicles the story of those who had to flee during the Second Sudanese Civil War.

Young boys walked from South Sudan to Ethiopia and finally to Kenya to escape the violent conflict that was waged by government and rebel forces in their villages. It is estimated that two million people died in this conflict.

After as many as ten years in a refugee camp, many of the Lost Boys were resettled all over the United States. Told in the first person, Eggers recounts Deng's story from his life in a southern Sudanese village to his struggles as a new immigrant in Atlanta, Georgia.

Harrowing, grimly humorous, terrifying and inspiring, What Is the What dramatizes the power of community amidst the chaos of civil war in a part of the world often overlooked and neglected.

First Year Book
2010-2011 Nominations

Let us know which book you would pick for the next school year by filling out our Nomination Form.