Upon opening Dave Egger’s recent release “What is the What,” the author’s “fictional biography” of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, one approaches the novel with a certain degree of skepticism. Eggers, best known for his memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and his novel “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” has been heralded as one of today’s brightest authors, eloquently combining comedy and tragedy and depicting characters never before seen to readers, yet who still embody idiosyncratic details that make each character believable, relatable and likeable. And while Eggers’ past releases are by no means restricted to colorful characters and the comedic irony of life, a biography of a Sudanese refugee plagued by civil war, overwhelming familial loss and difficulty adjusting to life in the United States’ does seem perhaps a bit out of his comfort zone.

Yet, in preparation to write “What is the What,” Eggers’ worked closely with Deng, and instead of writing his story for him, it’s more appropriate to think of this novel as Eggers’ lending his articulate yet casual voice to a story that needs to be told, and what’s more, needs to be read by Americans unaware of the harsh reality Sudanese citizens like Deng have faced and continue to face today.

With a popular author like Eggers behind this project, readers who would normally walk right past Deng’s biography (likely myself included) pick up the novel, expecting to, all at once, be overcome with Eggers fantastic ability to tell stories with an account of a life so completely removed from the one we live. Furthermore, because Eggers’ beloved voice is still thankfully intact, this novel can serve as an “introduction” to the situation in Sudan, leading us slowly through this un-ignorable reality.

So how does the novel fare against such tremendous expectations? Better than I could have predicted. The novel accounts Deng’s story with informal beauty and eloquence — it seems as though simple and true sentences are truly effortless for Eggers. And while I’m not sure if Eggers traveled to Sudan in preparation to write the book, his command of the country’s landscape and portrayal of the people seems natural and accurate and often, nothing short of breathtaking.

As one might expect, there is a fair amount of misfortune, violence and gore so unknown and unexpected to our society that it catches us completely off guard; images of genocide and hate stay in one’s mind hours after putting the book down. Still, as is his style, Eggers goes about the telling of this sorrow with his usual degree of casual elegance; the images are harsh and real, but he is not showing them to shock but rather to inform. Egger does not dwell on the images of gunshot victims, raped women or cities ravaged by civil unrest — the images simply stay with us because they are powerful and true.

All in all, “What is the What” both stays true to Eggers’ previously determined technique for literary success as well as showcases how he can handle topics foreign to both he and the reader with credibility and grace. While it may be a departure from the laugh-out-loud comedy of his previous endeavors, “What is the What” is a book that succeeds on too many levels not to be read.