Book Review: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Read Zeitoun by Dave Eggers for a truly engrossing and enraging narrative of one man's experiences during and following the 2005 flooding of New Orleans. What Hurricane Katrina (together with poor civil preparedness and bad levee engineering) did to the victims of this storm was horrifying enough. We all know that. But Zeitoun is an intensely gripping personal account of one victim who found himself innocently caught in the aftermath of the government's nightmarish disaster response.


You may be aghast to learn what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun - a Syrian-American, married father of four children, highly successful contractor, and well-liked and respected citizen of New Orleans - when he stayed behind to protect his home and business interests.  The merciful actions he took in saving people and pets were not met in kind by U.S. authorities.  Author Dave Eggers has written a remarkably tempered accounting of Mr. Zeitoun's ordeal in this highly readable narrative nonfiction book.

Review by Evelyn Fischel