Reviews
"Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina.... Eggers's tone is pitch-perfect-suspense blended with just enough information to stoke reader outrage and what is likely to be a typical response: How could this happen in America'... It's the stuff of great narrative nonfiction.... Fifty years from now, when people want to know what happened to this once-great city during a shameful episode of our history, they will still be talking about a family named Zeitoun." -Timothy Egan,The New York Times Book Review "Zeitounis a riveting, intimate, wide-scanning, disturbing, inspiring nonfiction account of a New Orleans married couple named Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun who were dragged through their own special branch of Kafkaesque (for once the adjective is unavoidable) hell after Hurricane Katrina.... [It's] unmistakably a narrative feat, slowly pulling the reader into the oncoming vortex without literary trickery or theatrical devices, reminiscent of Mailer'sExecutioner's Songbut less craftily self-conscious in the exercise of its restraint. Humanistic, that is, in the highest, best, least boring sense of the word." -James Wolcott,Vanity Fair "A fiercely elegant and simply eloquent tale.... So fierce in its fury, so beautiful in its richly nuanced, compassionate telling of an American tragedy, and finally, so sweetly, stubbornly hopeful." - Susan Larson,New Orleans Times-Picayune "A major achievement and [Eggers'] best book yet." - Andrew Ervin,Miami Herald "Eggers' sympathy for Zeitoun is as plain and real as his style in telling the man's story... he simply lets the surreal and tragic facts speak for themselves." - Chris Nashawaty,Entertainment Weekly "A wrenching, human story of family, faith and, ultimately, hope.... Dave Eggers is an important writer with a big heart." -The Globe and Mail(Toronto) "The sheer momentum, emotional force and imagistic power of [Zeitoun]... seeks both to inspire and outrage.... Ingenious." -Salon "Zeitoun is a warm, exciting and entirely fresh way of experiencing Hurricane Katrina." -The San Francisco Chronicle, "This is a beautiful book. Zeitoun is a poignant, haunting, ethereal story about New Orleans in peril. Eggers has bottled up the feeling of post- Katrina despair better than anyone else. This is a simple story with a lingering radiance. My admiration for the humanist spirit of Eggers knows no bounds." Douglas Brinkley, author ofThe Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast "Zeitoun is an American epic. The post-Katrina trials of Abdulrahman Zeitoun would have baffled even Kafka. Joseph K. Though Zeitoun's story could have been a source of cynicism or despair, Dave Eggers's clear and elegant prose manages to deftly capture many of the signature shortcomings of American life while holding onto the innate optimism and endless drive to more closely match our ideals that Zeitoun and his adopted land share. Juggling these contradictions, Eggers captures the puzzle of America." Billy Sothern, author of Down in New Orleans "Zeitoun is a gripping and amazing story that highlights so much about the tragedy of Katrina, post-9/11 life for Arabs and Muslims, and the beautiful nature of American multi-cultural society. Yousef Munayyer, policy analyst, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Through the experience of one man and his brave wife, this book allows you to experience the natural and man-made devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina with entirely new eyes. What Abdulrahman Zeitoun (and others like him) endured in the aftermath of that storm should never be forgotten. This book goes a long way toward ensuring that we never will. " Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo
