Dave Eggers, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, How We Are Hungry ( ), and What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng ( Selection), is also the editor of McSweeney’s and the founder of 826 Valencia, a San Francisco nonprofit writing center for young people.
The Topic: As Hurricane Katrina approached, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a successful Syrian immigrant and longtime resident of New Orleans, evacuated his wife and children but chose to stay behind. When the city flooded, he paddled a canoe through the abandoned streets, protecting his property and helping trapped people and animals. A week later, he disappeared. Arrested by an armed squad and taken away at gunpoint, he was accused of being a member of Al Qaeda and imprisoned in a metal cage—all without being officially charged. Eggers explores Zeitoun’s Syrian roots and American marriage, his bureaucratic nightmare, and the contradictions of American freedom during the Bush era.
McSweeney’s. 342 pages. $24. ISBN: 9781934781630
NY Times Book Review
"What Dave Eggers has found in the Katrina mud is the full-fleshed story of a single family, and in telling that story he hits larger targets with more punch than those who have already attacked the thematic and historic giants of this disaster. It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction." Timothy Egan
Entertainment Weekly
"[Eggers] doesn’t try to dazzle with heartbreaking pirouettes of staggering prose; he simply lets the surreal and tragic facts speak for themselves. And what they say about one man and the city he loves and calls home is unshakably poignant—but not without hope, since the proceeds from Eggers’ book are earmarked for the Zeitoun Foundation, which will help the victims of Katrina." Chris Nashawaty
New Yorker
"Eggers, compiling his account from interviews, sensibly resists rhetorical grandstanding, letting injustices speak for themselves. His skill is most evident in how closely he involves the reader in Zeitoun’s thoughts."
San Francisco Chronicle
"I was in New Orleans for the disaster, covering it for the New Yorker, and Eggers—who wasn’t there—not only captured it perfectly from Abdulrahman’s reminisces, he also taught me new ways of looking at it. … [It] would have been comforting, as a reader, to have Eggers’ most explosive accusations backed up by more than one source." Dan Baum
Critical Summary
The New York Times Book Review called Zeitoun "the stuff of great narrative fiction," and critics agreed that Eggers tells Zeitoun’s tragic story without the postmodern trickery and tirades he has exhibited in previous works. Instead, he allows the story to tell itself while imbuing Zeitoun’s tragedy with deep sympathy and emotion. Although Eggers didn’t witness Hurricane Katrina’s devastation firsthand, he captures the experience through Zeitoun’s eyes and approaches his subject very intimately. A few critics noted that while this perspective was convincing, it required "faith on the part of the reader that everything in the book happened as it appears here" (San Francisco Chronicle). But this was a minor complaint in an overall unforgettable story.
Cited by the Critics
City of Refuge | Tom Piazza (2008): Piazza contrasts two stories of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath—one of a white professional heading for divorce, and the other of a black Vietnam vet from the Lower Ninth Ward. Their fates reveal New Orleans’s racial and class tensions.