asks. "I cannot tell you," God replies. "Still, you have to choose ...between the cattle and the What." The man and woman wisely choose the cattle, thereby passing God's test to appreciate what they had been given. Thence comes the eponymous phrase whose unknowable answer frames Dave Eggers' latest book. Through the survival struggles of one of the country's thousands of Lost Boys, WHAT IS THE WHAT traces the late 20th Century history of Sudan, from the incipient struggles of the black African south against the Moslem-leaning government of Khartoum to today's current manifestation of this genocide, Darfur. When the story opens, Valentino Achak Deng has already left his native country for Atlanta, one of the many Lost Boys (and a smattering of Lost Girls) who have gained asylum and sponsorship in America, Canada, Australia, and other Western countries. Achak has been mentored and assisted to the degree that charitable organizations and personal acts of kindness can accomplish. Still, we quickly learn that he finds himself struggling at every turn to make enough money in menial jobs to survive, achieve a few modest comforts, and maintain respectable grades in his community college studies so as to seek admission to a full, four-year college. As if the various horrors he suffered in his flight from the Sudan to Kenya were not awful enough, Eggers puts his protagonist directly into the powerless victim role from nearly the first page of the book - Achak answers a knock on his door only to