Trio Talk Sudanese Voices

Hearing Valentino Achak Deng speak at Memorial Church on Monday night would have been an uncanny experience for those who have read Dave Eggers’ latest work.

Deng is the protagonist of “What is the What,” a novel that is also a fictionalized, autobiographical account of his experiences as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. And while Eggers’ name may be on the front of the book, the voice between the covers is unmistakably Deng’s.

It is a surprising move for Eggers, a writer who has made a career out of writing himself all over the page, first in his breakout memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” and then in his debut novel, “You Shall Know Our Velocity!”

In “What is the What,” Eggers is nowhere to be found, and he says he wanted it that way.

“I’ve tried hard to get back into the background and just be the guy that writes books,” Eggers said in an interview. “This book in particular, I was really trying not to have one word, or one tiny inkling of my own style or my own personality, and so I gave it up completely to Valentino.”

Any lingering worries that Eggers may have replaced Deng’s voice with his own are quickly dispelled by Deng, who controls all of the proceeds from the sale of “What is the What” and plans to use them to fund the construction of schools and libraries in the Sudan. He described a long collaborative process of talking, writing, editing, and re-writing. “I’ve read it so many times,” Deng said. “For four years we were working on this story.”

A mutual friend introduced the two when Deng expressed a desire to seek out help in writing his autobiography. Eggers said the project immediately jumped out at him as “crucial.”

“Any writer has a bunch of ideas in their head, and then suddenly one bursts through and announces itself and has with it all of the challenges and solutions you need to be interested in a project for a couple of years or more,” Eggers said. “Valentino’s story was more urgent than other projects that I had going on.”

Both Eggers and Deng said the process was a painful one. Deng was asked to systematically recall scenes of violence and horror in exacting detail, and the responsibility that Eggers felt for Deng’s story made writing difficult for him.

“Sometimes you have to enjoy the writing more line by line,” Eggers said. “But sometimes you have to use what you know to help along someone else’s story.”

Eggers said that the resurgence of violence in Darfur has only made “What is the What” more relevant, and that he and Deng have been touring in order to draw attention to the parallels between the novel and current events.

And while he emphasized the importance of telling Valentino’s story “well” rather than just telling it, Eggers said he takes his cues from his readers rather than from critics.

“I don’t know anything about critics,” Eggers said. “I don’t read reviews. That’s a conversation between critics and readers and I’m not a part of that. The only way you know is when you meet people who have read it and they’ve understood and they’re better able to understand the life of someone in Valentino’s shoes. That’s the measure of success for me.”

This may seem a counterintuitive assertion coming from Eggers, who reviewed Edward P. Jones’ short story collection “All Aunt Hagar’s Children” for the New York Times Book Review last August. But Eggers said his goals as a reviewer are appreciative rather than evaluative.

“I write reviews when I love a book and I feel like I can explain it,” Eggers said. “I just feel like Edward P. Jones is underappreciated and under-read, so I felt that I would do what I could to explain his work and bring it to new people.”

At Monday’s talk, Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy Samantha Power, who moderated the discussion for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, suggested that Eggers’ work as a writer in the service of humanitarian goals has overtaken his role as a writer. In addition to writing “What is the What,” Eggers is a co-editor of “Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated.”

But Eggers later said that this characterization may not be quite accurate. Though it’s true that his recent work has engaged with both international and domestic politics, he anticipates an eventual, though not necessarily permanent, return to a more familiar style.

“‘What is the What’ wasn’t about me,” Eggers said, “but I’ll write another book that’s stylistically more exuberant, I guess.”

—Staff writer Richard S. Beck can be reached at rbeck@fas.harvard.edu.