A Long Way Gone
2007
- united nations
- africa, biography
- africa, history
- africa, juvenile literature
- africa, west, history
- barnsoldater
- biographies
- biography
- boy soldiers
- children
The story
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s). Beah was 12 years old when he fled his village after it was attacked by rebels, and he wandered the war-filled country until brainwashed by an army unit that forced him to use guns and drugs. By 13, he had perpetrated and witnessed numerous acts of violence. Three years later, UNICEF rescued him from the unit and put him into a rehabilitation program that helped him find his uncle, who would eventually adopt him. After his return to civilian life he began traveling the United States recounting his story. A Long Way Gone was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at No. 3, and praising it as "painfully sharp", and its ability to take "readers behind the dead eyes of the child-soldier in a way no other writer has." A Long Way Gone was listed as one of the top ten books for young adults by the American Library Association in 2008.
What it’s like
Plain, direct first-person prose, spare and unhurried in its childhood passages, where memories of village songs, hip-hop on a battery radio, and long walks through dry bush and rain-soaked forest paths carry a warm, dusty brightness. The sensory world is heat, red earth, cooking smoke and the sound of a community at play, and that ease makes the turn harder to bear when war breaks in. The mood is grief-struck and watchful, a quiet dread that settles into numbness as the narrator's sense of self is worn away. Violence is present and frank: killings, the use of guns and drugs, and the brutality of a militarized childhood are described directly, without gore for its own sake, but they land with real weight. Pacing moves from the slow drift of a boy's days on the run to sharp, sudden episodes of fear and loss, and the emotional arc follows a child's fragile attempt to recover his humanity through memory, friendship and rehabilitation. Best for readers who want a serious, sobering memoir about childhood, war and recovery, read with patience and reflection, and not for anyone seeking something gentle or light.
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