pDR. LUAL DENG provides in this book a powerful narrative of a national conversation among the people of South Sudan about the challenges and opportunities for overcoming the crises of leadership and governance since independence on July 9th, 2011. The National Dialogue has been both a forum and a process in which the people of South Sudan have expressed their views, through an inclusive participatory conversation, about what has gone wrong with the binding narrative-at independence-of triumph and freedom. This inclusive participatory conversation has been from the grassroots, to the National Dialogue Conference, through Regional Conferences, all facilitated by a credible convener in the form of a Steering Committee under the able leadership of H.E. Abel Alier and Hon. Angelo Beda. Lual Deng, one of the policy analysts that provided technical backstopping to the Steering Committee, narrates in this book the structure and the process of the National Dialogue. He illustrates how the poli