Zeitoun

In August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina blew in, the city of New Orleans had been abandoned by most citizens. But resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun, though his wife and family had gone, refused to leave. For days he traversed an apocalyptic landscape of flooded streets by canoe. He protected neighbours' properties, fed trapped dogs and rescued survivors. But eventually he came to the attention of those 'guarding' this drowned city. Only then did Zeitoun's nightmare really begin. "Zeitoun" is the powerful, ultimately uplifting true story of one man's courage when confronted with an awesome force of nature followed by more troubling human oppression.

Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including What is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France's Prix Medicis Etranger. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. In 2002, he co-founded 826 National, a network of nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for youth throughout the United States. As a journalist, Eggers's work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time, and Esquire. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and there he cofounded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world.