Zeitoun & Voices From the Storm Bundle

In the late summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, leveling entire cities and leaving others under vast amounts of water. Shortly thereafter, Voice of Witness—a nonprofit book series that depicts human rights crises around the world through the oral histories of those who experience them—conducted dozens of interviews with various Gulf Coast residents. Four years later, two books have sprung from those efforts: Voices from the Storm, the second book in the Voice of Witness series, and Zeitoun, Dave Eggers's tragic, but ultimately hopeful tale of one man's struggle through Katrina.


VOICES FROM THE STORM
 
Stranded in a city submerged, the narrators of Voices from the Storm survived the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina only to find themselves abandoned—and even victimized—by their own government. These thirteen men and women of New Orleans recount, in astonishing and heartrending detail, the worst natural disaster in American history. Among these stories is Abdulrahman Zeitoun's, which inspired Eggers's work.


ZEITOUN

When Hurricane Katrina 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 days after, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. But, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun’s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy—an American who converted to Islam—and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun became possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research—in this case, in the U.S., Spain, and Syria.

The author's proceeds from Zeitoun go to the Zeitoun Foundation, which aids rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.