Born in Sudan in the short years of peace between the first and second civil war, Deng was a young member of a Dinka family clan who lived, farmed, hunted, and herded in the plains of the South.

His was a childhood that saw the peace, clarity, and community found in the customs of his group, but also the arbitrariness of death, which was an undisguised feature of the tribal life, beset by hyenas from the wilds, and the lingering warfare of old enemy groups.

It was a life that was raw to the cruel facts of life, as much as its simple joys.

I saw a huge man with black ceremonial bands wrapped around his biceps lying motionless on his back in the middle of the market. The smooth shaft of an arrow pointed skywards from his chest as if he'd been pinned to the earth like a bug on a table. I scurried away and hid. Later on I found out the bow and arrow is the weapon of choice among the Mandari.

But then the civil war started, and the country was flooded with weapons, spread and distributed like rumours among the tribe's people who in Deng's youth had honoured their grudges with poisons, raids, and bows and arrows.

Deng, like many other boys, felt called upon, as they were scattered from their villages, to pick up the AK-47s offered all too easily, and to fight the Northern powers.

The tragedy laid bare the cold reality that in war, the gun is everything. It didn't matter whether you were a boy soldier, a tank commander, a great general or a tribesman in the bush - if one pulls his gun first and shoots the other, then that is the end of that.

For years Deng was trained, brutalised, marshalled, thrown around the currents between surrounding African nations, their separate revolutions, and their refugee camps, seeing and suffering things perhaps thought dead in the modern world - the horrors of human conflict not numbed, but accentuated by the powers of modernity.

Until Deng and his family suddenly escaped, accepted as refugees to the great Southern land.

Says Deng: "Australia had suddenly appeared on the horizon, promising a fresh start. It was as if I was being handed a new life; I felt like I could start to dream again. This reversal of fortunes was so sudden and so profound that I had trouble comprehending it."

Lost Boy is not the story of the boy, but of the man that would follow. Not only of Sudan, but of Australia.

Deng's memoir is a relatively short read, made stronger for its clarity and brevity, but it covers the great variety of life.

In a story as much Apocalypse Now as it is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Deng shifts from the sights, sounds, and sensations of the brutal guerilla war fought by boys, to his life in a country of comparative prosperity and plenty.

It's plagued instead by the incongruous trials and pitfalls of drugs and mental illness, finding his way into the lucrative business of Western corruptions where the spectre of death only appears drunk behind the wheel of a sports car.

In the nightclubs it was perpetually my shout and it wasn't uncommon for me to spend $1500 to $2000 a night buying top-shelf drinks for my friends like Michael and Matthew, and even for complete strangers. My pockets were always full of cash. If I saw little African kids at the basketball courts in Brisbane I'd hand them $20 each. Easy come, easy go.

Through this story, Deng uncovers the scars of what he has seen, the invisible hurdles of vulnerable new Australians, and the bizarre opportunities for corruption found in the Western "heaven".

It is an account which works to vindicate the struggles of Sudanese in Australia, and to break the vow of silence which burdened its author for so many years.

It's also a remarkable window into the comparisons of the modern world, comparisons which bear reflections on the meaning of the words "Lucky Country".

Happy white families sat on grassy hills that rolled gently down to a lake where mother ducks fussed over ducklings. ... 'I've seen this place before - in a book,' I told Ruben, who stood awestruck beside me on the bank of the lake. 'This is just what heaven will look like. We're lucky, I tell you. We're standing in paradise right now.'