(McSweeney's; 342 pages; $24) Reviewed by Dan Baum San Francisco Chronicle, Copyright 2009 Which makes you more angry -- the authorities' handling of Hurricane Katrina or the treatment of Arabs since Sept. 11, 2001? Can't make up your mind? Dave Eggers has the book for you. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is an immigrant from Syria who in 2005 owned a successful house-painting business in New Orleans. He lived a quiet, all-American life with his American-born wife, Kathy -- who had converted from Christianity to Islam before meeting him -- and their four children in a house they owned in the Uptown district. Life was good. As Katrina approaches, Kathy and the kids flee to her sister's home in Baton Rouge, but Abdulrahman stays behind to keep an eye on the house, his business, the half-finished jobs of his clients, his rental properties and the neighborhood. For the first few days of the crisis he is elated to have stayed; he paddles around the city in a canoe, rescuing people, feeding abandoned dogs and feeling eminently useful. The reader comes to like Abdulrahman very much, for his calm, his generosity, his devotion to his family. Then he is arrested and descends into a Kafkaesque nightmare. Anybody who's ever been thrown by Eggers' ego as a writer -- the flowery, obscure tangents of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' or the too-cool-to-be-understood qualities of his journal McSweeney's -- will be impressed by the plainness of his storytelling in 'Zeitoun.' It's Abdulrahman, not Eggers, who is important here, and Eggers reveals a sweet, modest and poetic side as a writer that is very appealing. I was in New Orleans for the disaster, covering it for the New Yorker, and Eggers -- who wasn't there -- not only captured it perfectly from Abdulrahman's reminisces, he also taught me new ways of looking at it -- such as the way the helicopters overhead made for a 'vibrating sky.' This is as accurate, sensual and readable an account of Hurricane Katrina as you can find in nonfiction; for emotional punch it equals Tom Piazza's stunning novel 'City of Refuge.' A Bay Area resident, Eggers also has a good feel for the quirks of Louisiana culture, such as a woman who cooks for an elderly lady and is 'warmed ... to know someone would go to the trouble to eat what she'd made.' When Abdulrahman is suddenly and inexplicably arrested halfway through the book, 'Zeitoun' turns from uplifting to dark. Along with another Arab immigrant, he is accused of being an agent of al Qaeda, singled out from other prisoners for abuse and isolation, and refused permission to make a phone call for weeks. His wife and a brother in Spain -- already worried about him staying in the flooded city -- become frantic when he seems to drop off the face of the earth. It takes a whispered phone call from a pastor who has seen him in prison to tell them Abdulrahman is even alive. We've all read accounts of innocent Arabs being rounded up after 9/11; Eggers makes this account completely new, and so infuriating I found myself panting with rage. Abdulrahman is subject to casual racism throughout his ordeal, but it transpires that he wasn't arrested for being an Arab after all, but simply for being in the wrong place when a bunch of overzealous New Mexico cops -- hastily deputized and terrified by the babies-raped-in-the-Superdome rumormongering of Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass -- happened by. Although told in third person, the Zeitouns' stories are told entirely through their eyes, and Eggers is donating all of his share of the proceeds to a human rights foundation named for the Zeitouns. Telling the story entirely through their eyes makes a strong point of view but requires faith on the part of the reader that everything in the book happened as it appears here. But that's a quibble. 'Zeitoun' is a warm, exciting and entirely fresh way of experiencing Hurricane Katrina. Dan Baum is the author of 'Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans,' published in February by Spiegel & Grau. 