From Goodreads: The devastating story of war through the eyes of a child soldier. Beah tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and became a soldier.
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.”
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
I first heard Ismael Beah on The Moth telling this story. The story definitely stuck with me and when I came across a copy of Beah’s memoir I had to pick it up.
This is a hard book. It is very very dark and graphic and honestly, I found I had trouble reading it so I borrowed the audiobook and did a tandem read. I found it was much easier to focus on it if I was listening and reading it as the same time. I can assure you that the issue of focus was not due to the writing…it was 100% because I wanted to dissociate from the horrors…and I realized that if I allowed myself to dissociate it was a complete disservice to Beah and all the other children in his shoes around the world.
A Long Way Gone is one of those books that everyone needs to read. We need to understand what other humans are going through around the world and why it is so imperative that we don’t just automatically shut down and refuse to help.