I'll be honest, I've never formally reviewed anything. Even when I worked at a magazine I only wrote short, promo-like blurbs about products and stores and people - but I didn't actually review them - not really.
I'll start off by saying this review is going to be quite bias because for those of you who know me well know that I credit Dave Eggers as the author who inspired me to go into writing. I've forever been fascinated with life writing - and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius turned me on to a style of writing I'd never read before. I could go on and on, but this isn't a review of that book.
Zeitoun reflects a new phase in Eggers' career - telling the stories of those who have suffered great losses and great injustices. His previous book, What is the What, tells the story of a man who lived in Southern Sudan during the civil war and was a Lost Boy brought to America. Zeitoun is the story of a family before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Sounds like thousands of stories, right? Wrong. The Zeitouns are a Muslim family. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, an American citizen but native of Syria, his American wife Kathy, a Muslim covert before she met her husband, and their four children endured more than just the storm.
The story begins like so many I've read about Katrina. Those who fled and those who didn't both suffered in different ways. In this book, Kathy and the children fled for what they thought would only be four days - staying in a crowded house in Baton Rouge. Abdulrahman (known just as Zeitoun by most) stayed to watch the house, and monitor his rental properties (he owned his own painting and contracting business, and owned several rental properties in the city). The initial storm was not as bad as predicted, but the levees breached and the city was all but drowned.
Zeitoun, with a used canoe, began surveying the neighbourhood for damage. He helped rescue several people, and even fed some local dogs who's owners had fled and left them locked inside. Seems like a feel-good story right?
The story takes an unexpectedly sad turn when Zeitoun, his tenant Todd, an acquaintance Nasser (also of Muslim faith), and a virtual stranger who happened upon them, Ronnie, were all arrested without cause in one of Zeitoun's rental properties - a house with a working phone.
I'll stop here, so not to spoil the story. The story of Zeitoun shows both sides of human nature: the selflessness of those who stayed and helped, and the selfishness that those who stayed and stole.
With no proper legal system in place during such a disaster police officers and National Guards were making snap judgments. There seemed to be no protocol during Katrina - no sense of order.
Zeitoun tells the story of one man's struggle, while also telling an entire city's. It's an individual story about a family - about a man. A story that goes beyond the storm, but would not have happened without the storm. Zeitoun is about an unimaginable aftermath. An aftermath that begs the question, 'What is the world coming to?'
