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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - along way gone review
Here it is a book about adventure and action, emotion and death. The memoirs of a boy soldier. The war in South Africa took its toll on thousands of people, emotionally and physically. Poverty plagues ... Read More
Rating: - Opened my eyes
I want to preclude this review by saying I do have some minor spoilers here to the plot but they don't give so much away that it would in any way diminish your enjoyment of this book.
Rating: - Too much empty space in the narrative
An interesting story, but child soldiers fighting for the side of the government seem a lot less interesting than those fighting on the sides of the rebels.
Here, although there were some harrowing, ... Read More
Rating: - INCREDIBLE AND HEART FELT
When I put this book down all I could say was, "Wow." You feel the pain he must have been going through when he lost his family, you feel his anger at the way he was treated by the Rebels and you are shocked when ... Read More
Rating: - Very impressive and inspiring
This book is disturbing and for that reason should be on the short list of required texts for college. Unlike the WWI and WWII war books which read like ancient history this one hits close to home as most of the ... Read More
- along way gone review
- Too much empty space in the narrative