I hosted this month’s book club, and my pick was Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun. I picked Zeitoun because it deals with the collision of two large-scale American disasters – Hurricane Katrina and the “war on terror.”
I had hoped that this month’s smallish group would mean we could sit up in the family room, where we have actual comfortable furniture, but there is enough sickness in my house that I let Mr. B. have that, while the rest of us congregated in my kitchen/dining and snacked as we talked.
Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers
Knopf Doubleday
ISBN: 978 0 30738 794 3
Audience: grown-ups
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, and started reading it as a narrative of a man who stayed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It was a fascinating window into how a familiar place can turn into a strange world overnight, but the book really took a turn when Zeitoun’s wife loses track of him. Eggers is great at building suspense here, until we discover what has become of Zeitoun, when worry turns to anger.
Without wanting to give too much away, his presence in a nearly empty town with stories of looting, murders and rapes running like wildfire makes him seem suspect, and his Syrian ancestry ups the ante. With all regular systems broken by the disaster, his ordeal turns into one that no person should have to report having lived. In the end, I was left stunned, but also sad that I was not as shocked as I should have been, knowing how the so-called “war on terror” has changed balances of power and the outlook of many in the business of enforcement.
This true story was told with the deep involvement of the Zeitoun family and many others, and the pages of back material show meticulous research, as well as a commitment to returning all proceeds to the devastated city of New Orleans. This story may leave you angry – it should. It may leave you sad and overwhelmed – it should. But it’s a very worthwhile read, one that balances telling a story that everyone should hear with writing that is wonderfully, fluidly narrative. It manages, somehow, to be both the kind of book that made me feel that I should have read it and the kind that pulled me fully into the story. That, for a reader, is golden.