Zeitoun

I really enjoyed Dave Eggers' last book What is the What and this is in the same vein. A true story told in a very unsensational way. What is the What made the horrific story of the Sudanese lost boys somehow bearable. Eggers' tone is always even and unemotional, a blank slate on which you put your own emotions, he isn't always telling you what to feel. Zeitoun is a story of a Syrian American man who stays behind in New Orleans while his family flees Hurricane Katrina.
The first part of the book is about Zeitoun, his last name, paddling quietly around the city in a canoe. The second part of the book is the nightmare that he and his family fall into. In the first part of the book he's simply a citizen of New Orleans quietly helping out, the second part reminds us that he is also a Muslim and an Arab.
Not watching TV I didn't have all the visual images of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that everyone else did, this book opened my eyes to the complete mismanagement of the disaster. I imagine for people who knew more about it, it will resonate even more.