VAD: It is very close to the truth, but many things in the book are somewhat different than what happened in life. Some characters have been combined. Some time is compressed. They are minor things, but they were necessary. For one thing, I was very young when the book begins, so I could not remember conversations and small details from my early childhood in Marial Bai. It was necessary to reconstruct the chronology, and that is what Dave did. He took the basic facts and then created the story from there.
Shruti A on 25 Feb 13An interesting video which shows Valentino Achak Deng talking about his family and his life in Sudan. He describes incidents from the book, showing where they took place, as the video is being filmed in Marial Bai. It's pretty helpdul if you are researching about Valentino.
