The 'Re-imagining' of a Real Story

Some interesting stuff in the Post's review of the new Eggers book: And he's talking about one thing readers of "What Is the What" can't say for sure: How much is fact and how much is fiction.

Why the line-blurring? The explanation goes like this: Introduced to Deng in early 2003 and deeply engaged by his story, Eggers set out to write a conventional biography. But he kept getting stuck.

"I didn't know how to do it," he says. "I didn't want my own voice in there."

Despairing, he was ready to give the whole thing up. Then it occurred to him that "all the books that we remember about war and about the biggest events of the 20th century are novels." Think of "The Naked and the Dead," "Catch-22"…