Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian-born entrepreneur who runs a busy painting company in New Orleans. He is a devout Muslim, married to a native of Baton Rouge who had converted to Islam before meeting Zeitoun.As Hurricane Katrina barrels toward New Orleans, his wife Kathy takes the children out of town, while Abdulrahman stays to keep an eye on their house and several rental properties they own. In the first couple of days, his decision to stay behind seems a good one, and even after the levees break and the streets and houses fill with water, he is able to help several people who have stayed behind but now need to be rescued. As the National Guard enter the city, armed with machine guns and surveillance helicopters, things begin to go very wrong for Abdulrahman. He is taken into custody and put into a temporary jail—a cage, in fact—hastily erected behind the Greyhound station. There he is subject to strip searches, and he witnesses beatings and other mistreatment of fellow prisoners, and is denied the right to phone his wife and let her know where he is.
Zeitoun’s ordeal is the main subject of this harrowing nonfiction book, while Eggers enriches the shocking tale of injustice with a richly layered account of Zeitoun’s early life on the coast of Syria, his large and loving family, his relationships with his friends, employees, and neighbors.
337 pages (July 2009)
Book Page at BookBrowse.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
Dave Eggers talking about the book:
This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.
Title Read-alikes: Uncompromised by Nada Prouty; The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom; A.D. by Josh Neufeld; Heart Like Water by Joshua Clark; Detained Without Cause by Irum Shiekh; 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose; The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley; The Wind in the Reeds by Wendell Pierce; and Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink.
No comments:
Post a Comment