Zeitoun was published by McSweeney’s in 2009. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, born in Syria, has lived in New Orleans for nearly two decades, operating a successful painting and contracting business with his wife Kathy, an American convert to Islam. When Hurricane Katrina approaches in August 2005, Kathy evacuates with the children; Zeitoun stays behind to protect his properties. When the levees break, he launches an aluminum canoe and begins paddling through the drowned city.
The first half of the book is extraordinary: Zeitoun’s canoe journey through a submerged New Orleans is simultaneously pastoral and apocalyptic. He rescues an elderly woman trapped in her home. He feeds dogs stranded on porches. He checks on his rental properties. The city is eerily quiet — no cars, no crowds, just water and silence and the occasional helicopter. Eggers writes these scenes with a restraint that makes them more powerful than any rhetoric could.
The second half is the nightmare: on September 6, soldiers arrive at one of Zeitoun’s properties and arrest him along with three others. He is taken to a temporary outdoor prison — cages set up at the New Orleans bus station — where he is accused of looting, held without charge, denied a phone call, and eventually transferred to a maximum-security prison. His family does not know where he is for weeks. The treatment is explicitly linked to his Muslim identity and Middle Eastern appearance.
Note: After the book’s publication, Zeitoun’s life took a darker turn — he was charged with domestic violence against Kathy in 2012, and their marriage dissolved. Eggers has not substantially addressed these developments, and the book remains a contested document: a powerful indictment of the Katrina response and post-9/11 paranoia, written about a subject whose subsequent actions complicated the narrative.
Collecting Zeitoun
First edition (McSweeney’s, San Francisco, 2009): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20
- Signed: $40–$100