A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy 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.

Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York and then graduated from Oberlin College in 2004. He is a member of Human Rights Watch Children's Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by war. He has also spoken before the United Nations on several occasions. His work has appeared in VespertinePress and LIT magazine. He lives in New York City.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year

A Newsweek Favorite Book of the Year

A Quill Book Award Finalist

A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year

A YALSA Best Book for Young Adults

Winner of the Alex Award

 

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 the 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 had been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and finally, to heal.

 

Also available on CD as an unabridged audiobook, read by the author.  Please email academic@macmillan.com for more information.

"What is it about African wars that is so disturbing? Why do they unsettle us so? . . . The great benefit of Ishmael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone, is that it may help us arrive at an understanding of this situation. Beah's autobiography is almost unique, as far as I can determine—perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the pubescent (or even prepubescent) warrior-killer . . . A Long Way Gone is his first, remarkable book . . . Beah's memoir joins an elite class of writing: Africans witnessing African wars . . . A Long Way Gone makes you wonder how anyone comes through such unrelenting ghastliness and horror with his humanity and sanity intact. Unusually, the smiling, open face of the author on the book jacket provides welcome and timely reassurance. Ishmael Beah seems to prove it can happen."—William Boyd, The New York Times Book Review

"What is it about African wars that is so disturbing? Why do they unsettle us so? . . . The great benefit of Ishmael Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone, is that it may help us arrive at an understanding of this situation. Beah's autobiography is almost unique, as far as I can determine—perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the pubescent (or even prepubescent) warrior-killer . . . A Long Way Gone is his first, remarkable book . . . Beah's memoir joins an elite class of writing: Africans witnessing African wars . . . A Long Way Gone makes you wonder how anyone comes through such unrelenting ghastliness and horror with his humanity and sanity intact. Unusually, the smiling, open face of the author on the book jacket provides welcome and timely reassurance. Ishmael Beah seems to prove it can happen."—William Boyd, The New York Times Book Review

 

"Everyone in the world should read this book. Not just because it contains an amazing story, or because it's our moral, bleeding-heart duty, or because it's clearly written. We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human . . . I don't think it's possible to 'understand' this book. A Long Way Gone says something about human nature that we try, most of the time, to ignore. Humans can be murderous, and that doesn't pertain in any way to religion or politics or ideology. These boys, on either side, didn't have the foggiest idea of the reasons for their war. The proselytizers, colonists, foreign entrepreneurs, politicians, even cheesy moviemakers all played a part in it—committing murder by proxy. The murder itself is ubiquitous. The faint good news in these pages is that if we're lucky, very lucky, we may be able to sneak out of this life without being either murderer or victim. But it's nothing to count on."—Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World

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• ISBN13: 9780374105235

• Condition: NEW

• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.