'Zeitoun' selected for One Book, One Community

The City of East Lansing and Michigan State University haveselected Dave Eggers’ 2009 novel “Zeitoun” as the 2010 One Book, One Communitynovel.

Set in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina hasdevastated the city, “Zeitoun” chronicles the journey of Syrian-American Abdulrahman Zeitoun,his wife, Kathy, and their four children as they face the storm’s terrifyingaftermath.

“It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction,” New YorkTimes critic Timothy Egan wrote in a review last August. “Eggers, the boywonder of good intentions, has given us 21st-­century Dickensian storytelling —which is to say, a character­-driven potboiler with a point. But here’s thereal trick: He does it without any writerly triple-lutzes or winks ofpost­modern irony. There are no rants against President Bush, no cheap shots atthe authorities who let this city drown. He does it the old-fashioned way: withshow-not-tell prose, in the most restrained of voices.”

Eggers’ previous works include “A Heartbreaking Work ofStaggering Genius” and “What is the What”; he also penned “The Wild Things,”which adapted Maurice Sendak’s children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” intoa full-length novel.

Eggers visits East Lansing High School at 7 p.m. Sunday,Aug. 29 to launch the month-long program. Various “Zeitoun”-themed events andreadings are also planned.

For more information, visit www.onebook.msu.edu.