Zeitoun

By: Dave Eggers

Narrated by: Firdous Bamji

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

In his new nonfiction book Zeitoun, New York Times best-selling author Dave Eggers tells a Hurricane Katrina story unlike any written before.

When HurricaneKatrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun - a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four - chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the eerie days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and rescuing those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared.

Eggers's riveting work, three years in the making, follows Zeitoun back to his childhood in Syria and around the world during his years as a sailor. The book also traces the story of Zeitoun's wife Kathy - a boisterous Southerner who converted to Islam - and their wonderful, funny, devoted family. When Zeitoun vanishes, Kathy is left to make sense of the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible.

©2009 Dave Eggers (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic 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?" (Timothy Egan, The New York Times)

Eye Opening

Interesting story about the experience of one individual during Hurricane Katrina. Disturbing on many levels as far as events that happened that the general public may not be aware. It showed me aspects of this event that I was never even thought possible in the United States

One of the best books I have listened to

This was one of my favorite books. I have given it to many people. We all have heard so much about Katrina, this story puts a face to the events and adds the additional element of telling a us more about being Muslim in America. A must read.

It Sounds So Accurate

I was not there, but takes of Katrina have filled our TV news programs. When I saw the storm approaching on TV, I was at the Red Cross giving blood. I told my companions New Orleans knows how to handle storms. I relive my comment often. I thought I was correct in my assumption. I remember black family’s labeled looters while a white family doing the same thing were call brave heroes. I saw New Orleans long before the storm. It’s a magical city. Harry Connick, Jr. gave his shirt to a naked black man he carried from an abandoned house.

Well written well balanced

non fiction story. The narration could have been a lot better, but worked. The ending gave a provided thought excellent thoughts to summarize the events.

Fabulous Reading

Would you consider the audio edition of Zeitoun to be better than the print version?

The audio edition is performed by a man who has excellent pronunciation of the Arabic names and words, and has a musical voice. Wonderfully story-telling voice.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Zeitoun and his wife are the main characters, and they are noble and good and stout-of-heart. You follow Zeitoun from the bliss of his freedom to the frustratingly illogical imprisonment; he is always a sympathetic character. The story made this listener angry at the injustice and ignorance on display in the aftermath of Katrina's destruction of New Orleans.

What does Firdous Bamji bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His clear well-accented pronunciation and his musical voice. He is excellent at portraying all the different men's voices, and very good with the women's voices. Firdous Bamji has story-telling magic in his voice - I could listen (and did) for hours.

A postapocalyptic tale that is all too real

The is a true story of a man named Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his experiences when he stayed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Eggers wants to outrage us, and he succeeds by telling it straight, piling detail upon detail, and treating his protagonists--Zeitoun, his wife Kathy, their friends and family, and the people they encountered during this period--with respect and caring.

The story is simple. Zeitoun, a Syrian Muslim who has immigrated to the US, settled in New Orleans, and built a successful and well-respected contracting business, chooses to stay in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina floods the city to watch over his property and do what he can to help other residents. His wife, Kathy, chooses to flee the city with their 4 children, but the 2 are able to keep in touch regularly until he suddenly disappears. The circumstances of his disappearance, the efforts of Kathy and Zeitoun's farflung but loving Syrian relatives to find out what happened to him, and the ultimate resolution are described in simple, unpretentious, but elegant prose -- and yes -- things like this are not supposed to happen in the USA.

What an Incredible Story…

If you could sum up Zeitoun in three words, what would they be?

Inspiring. Shocking. Moving.

What other book might you compare Zeitoun to and why?

I'm not sure that I have read a book that would be a good comparison. I'll have to think about that...

Have you listened to any of Firdous Bamji’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I haven't, but would be interested.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Not so much a moment, but the pure determination of Zeitoun's wife throughout the entire ordeal.

Any additional comments?

I was shocked to learn that this happened in our country in the very recent past. I have also read about what has since happened to Zeitoun and it is very upsetting. You have to wonder how much his situation after Katrina played into the broken life he finds himself in now.

Affecting core

***1/2

I was moved by Egger's compassion, humor, and ability to translate the complex history and quirks of a troubled African country for Americans in his wonderful novel What is the What, so when I saw that he'd written a book about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, it went straight into my buy queue. Zeitoun is a real life account of the experiences of a guy-down-the-street, a Syrian-American businessman, who stays behind in a flooded New Orleans and travels around in a canoe, giving aid to stranded residents. After a few days, he's picked up by authorities for "looting" and thrown into a surreal, Kafka-esque nightmare of prison detention, where he is kept without charges, forbidden to contact his family, and treated by the guards as though he were a terrorist.

While Eggers devotes a few chapters to the damage wrought by the hurricane itself and to establishing Zeitoun as a good-hearted, generous family man who happens to be a Muslim, the clear heart of his book is his anger at the US goverment for its colossal mismanagement of the disaster and the post-9/11 paranoia that seems to justify all manner of senseless, arbitrary abuses by its security apparatus. It's unclear how much of Zeitoun's mistreatment had to do with his Arab background and how much was simply due to the callousness of a system in which no one considered it their job to tell a prisoner of the charges against him or grant him a phone call home, but, either way, the implications are troubling. By keeping Zeitoun's story so personal, easy to follow, and uneditorialized, Eggers succeeds in making the reader (at least this one) angry, too. Perhaps future schoolkids will read this book as a reminder of an unfortunate chapter in American history, or perhaps it's a preview of what's to come with the next Katrina or 9/11.

Outside of the chapters that deal with Zeitoun's incarceration, though, Egger's self-restraint works a little against the book's emotional impact. Zeitoun comes across as an admirable, likeable guy, but his life story reads a bit blandly. As might be expected for someone writing docu-lit with the subject's cooperation, Eggers treads lightly around the man and his family, which left me wishing for a little more of the fictional license that gave What is the What its connectness. Still, Egger's particular mix of thoughtfulness, humor, anger at injustice, and hope for a better world shine through, and Zeitoun is well worth reading for that.

Dave Eggers writes a winner once again.

Where does Zeitoun rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Ranks right up at the top. Excellent book, well written and well read. It's an amazing story. I highly recommend this book. Very informative re Katrina and it's aftermath as well as the experience of Muslims in America and how they are treated.

Interesting, inspiring and shocking

This is an amazing job by Dave Eggers, sailing the waters of non-fiction by telling the story of this Syrian-American who became a hero for his community and a victim of his adoptive country. Eggers' account is both entertaining and inspiring, deeply moving and ultimately shocking when we see the kind of things he had to endure.
The narration of Firdous Barnji is simply perfect. Eggers and Barnji know how to tell a true story.