Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers
He stayed to help after Katrina. They arrested him instead.
For you if
you want to understand what happened in New Orleans after Katrina through the man who stayed and helped and was punished for it
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Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American contractor in New Orleans who stays behind during Hurricane Katrina to protect his property and help his neighbors. He paddles through the flooded city in a canoe, rescuing people, feeding dogs, doing what he can. Then he is arrested by paramilitary police, held without charge in a makeshift prison, denied a phone call for weeks. Eggers reconstructs this true story with documentary precision. The most important post-Katrina dispatch — not about the storm but about what happened after: the racism, the Islamophobia, the collapse of due process, the specific experience of being Muslim and Arab in America in 2005.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Syria • Middle East
- Voice
- Written by a Syrian author
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
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