Books: I See Him in Me

(2 of 2)

From the day his village was destroyed, Deng never stopped looking for a safe, peaceful home. He finally made it to the U.S.--the promised land for many Sudanese--but in America he found new and confusing challenges: menial jobs, discrimination, endless seriocomic misunderstandings. In his first apartment he didn't realize he could turn off the air conditioning and spent a week sleeping with all his clothes on. The loudness and lewdness of the preshow festivities at an NBA game seemed to him "perfectly designed to drive people insane." The book is framed by Deng's experience of being robbed and beaten in his apartment in Atlanta.

After five years in America, Deng has finally managed to matriculate at Allegheny College in western Pennsylvania, where he's designing his major: international diplomacy. He hopes to use his share of the proceeds from What Is the What to fund an educational center in his hometown in Sudan. But his isn't a simple story of suffering and redemption, of a Lost Boy who was finally found. It's more of a long walk that doesn't end. Deng has gone far, but he still has far to go.

To read an excerpt from What Is the What, go to time.com/eggers