With the fourth anniversary now past, I thought I would highlight a few recent works which provide some interesting angles on Hurricane Katrina:

The first, of course, is Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun, which has received a lot of press over the past few weeks.  A fictionalized account of a Syrian-American man working to help his fellow New Orleanians in the days after the hurricane, Eggers’ work is more than just an exposé on the horrors of disaster.  Rather, it highlights the Bush-era political climate and the intersections between local and federal, personal and state.  Fictionalizing national trauma is always tricky, but Eggers pulls it off with depth and substance, allowing the reader to gain new insight into the disaster four years later.

The second, Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, I admit I have yet to read.  However, I was intrigued by the review in last week’s NY Times.  While not exclusively about Hurricane Katrina, Solnit explores the “utopia”-like qualities that develop in communities touched by extreme trauma and disaster (for example, tendencies toward altruism).  She debunks certain theories about human reaction to emergencies (such as instant panic), and examines myths about government organized response.  Given its recent nature, Katrina is a major focus, along with 9/11 as well as more historical tragedies.  The revelations seem quite intriguing.