Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Hurricanes and our BookBrowse Review of Zeitoun.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About This Guide
This guide is intended to enhance your groups reading and discussion of Dave Eggerss
Zeitoun, a harrowing nonfiction account of what happened to one man, and his family, in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
About The Book
Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian-born entrepreneur who runs a busy painting company in New Orleans. He is a devout Muslim, married to a native of Baton Rouge who had converted to Islam before meeting Zeitoun. As Hurricane Katrina barrels toward New Orleans, his wife Kathy takes the children out of town, while Abdulrahman stays to keep an eye on their house and several rental properties they own. In the first couple of days, his decision to stay behind seems a good one, and even after the levees break and the streets and houses fill with water, he is able to help several people who have stayed behind but now need to be rescued. As the National Guard enter the city, armed with machine guns and surveillance helicopters, things begin to go very wrong for Abdulrahman. He is taken into custody and put into a temporary jaila cage, in facthastily erected behind the Greyhound station. There he is subject to strip searches, and he witnesses beatings and other mistreatment of fellow prisoners, and is denied the right to phone his wife and let her know where he is.
Zeitouns ordeal is the main subject of this harrowing nonfiction book, while Eggers enriches the shocking tale of injustice with a richly layered account of Zeitouns early life on the coast of Syria, his large and loving family, his relationships with his friends, employees, and neighbors.
Reader's Guide
- Notes About This Book (xv) gives a sense of how the book was written, whose point of view it reflects, and Eggerss efforts at accuracy and truth in his depiction of events. By choosing to portray the response to the hurricane through its effects on one family, what kind of story (or history) does he achieve?
- The book opens with Friday, August 26, an expository chapter that introduces us to Zeitouns family life and his business life, the two very interconnected. What are some of the ways in which the descriptions here draw you in as a reader, and make these people and their situation real? Why is the timeline a good structural choice for this story?
- Kathy has grown up as a Southern Baptist. Drawn to Islam through her childhood friend Yuko, she decides to convert. Why, when she comes to visit wearing her hijab, does her mother tell her, Now you can take that thing off (57)? Why does the prayer from the Quran quoted on page 51 have a strong effect on her? What does her reaction to the evangelical preacher who mocks Islam and says that Kathys temptation to convert was the work of the devil (6566), say about Kathys character and intelligence?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.