A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

Apr 2007 · Sold by Sarah Crichton Books

About this ebook

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: 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.

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.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Ratings and reviews

This book made me really think about what is going on in the world today. Ishmael Beah takes you to Africa, he shows you the horrors of what was going on in Sierra Leone and is happening currently in other parts of the world. His life-time experiences are about, boy soldiers. Ishmael Beah was an innocent young boy who just wanted safety and no war. When his village was attacked by the rebels, he ran away, trying to find a place of safety and peace with his brothers and friends. I think, in the way that Ishmael truthfully uncovered his haunting and disturbing past of the horrible ways the rebels killed their innocent victims laughing and cheering at the many deaths they caused was something that we as humans need to hear and can learn of Satan’s immense power to do evil. We need to hear about this stuff, so we can take action and change it. This problem isn’t going to fix itself, we need to help. I though it very shocking when Ishmael was walking to someplace nonviolent, that the villagers wouldn’t trust them and help these starving boys who were perfectly innocent, just because of the actions of others. I was horrified at the one village they stopped at where the people harshly treated them because they were young boys; making them take off there shoes and walk on through the burning desert sand that burned the skin off their tired feet. When after his experience as a child soldier, I couldn’t believe the hatred that still filled them when they got to the recovery center. I wept at the fighting that broke out and the hate and war that they were causing among themselves. Such innocent boys, with such an unwillingly black past. written by JP

100. A long way gone: memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah. 229 pages. The author of this story was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. It is his story, in 5th grade level prose, of how he lost his family and was pressed into a radical army as a child. His little village is usurped by violent radicals against the government. For the first 100 pages, he raced through the jungles and eludes the vicious attackers. Mayhem is everywhere—broken bodies, homes, and even the fabric of their society. Then, he is forced to join a homespun army that fights against these radicals. He is given amphetamines, grass, and cocaine daily; these numb him and help indoctrinate him into the killer mode. He becomes a vicious killer for three years, but is eventually captured by UNICEF officials and sent to a rehab center for seven months. His uncle adopts him, but the uncle ironically dies when his new town is attacked again. Beah flees, and begins a new life in America. This is NOT a wellp-crafted piece of prose that will become a classic. Rather, it is a first-person narrative that tells outsiders what too many places in our world are like: violent, insane, frightening landscapes wherein children are abused and forced to become adults long before they have been allowed to experience childhood. Novels like this and Sold are both signs of these times: 3rd world countries are in chaos; each of these narratives is a plea for assistance. They are, to my way of thinking, the Dickensian “worst of times.” As in the time of A Tale of Two Cities, the question remains-will we/can we do something about these atrocities? Or are we resigned to our own struggles: two mortgages, high fuel prices, and trying to pay for our kids’ college tuition? In the meantime, books like this are chroniclers of man’s on-going inhumanity to fellow mankind. ***Three Star rating.

Imagine, you live in a village; you know, the ones without electricity and plumbing? You get water from the river for your mother so she can cook dinner but, when you come back, the village is ablaze and everyone is running. Not just running in one direction but everywhere; screaming, yelling, falling down dead. This is what causes Ishmael Beah's childhood to be lost. Beah starts out as a quiet, peace-loving boy who suddenly is on the run from all the destruction and terror with his older brother, Junior, and some friends. After months of wandering on paths and in the forest, they come to a farm outside of a village. Beah finds out his family is in the village and as a group they start walking. Then the rebels attack and his family is dead. Torn, tired, and angry, Beah will eventually lose everything he cared about; his family, his health (both mentally and physically), and almost his life. As a boy soldier recruited by the Sierra Leone Army he changes drastically. Drugs, energy stimulants, and other illegal acts (in the United States) cause him to kill without thinking, never even cringing at the sight of death and basically causing him to feel almost inhuman. A LONG WAY GONE is Ishmael Beah's memoir based on his experiences and the tragic events of his life. I loved this book because it was a huge eye-opener about the war in Sierra Leone and how it affected everyone, even children. I also believe that everyone should read this book at least once in their life time. Maybe then people can help those who have become boy soldiers or anyone affected by a war. Maybe A LONG WAY GONE could change the world, make it a more peaceful place; that is what I hope can happen.

About the author

Ishmael Beah was born in 1980 in Sierra Leone, West Africa. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vespertine Press, LIT, Parabola, and numerous academic journals. He is a UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Advisory Committee; an advisory board member at the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; visiting scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University; visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights at Rutgers University; cofounder of the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); and president of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many panels on the effects of war on children. His book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier has been published in over thirty languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in 2007. Time magazine named the book as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2007, ranking it at number three. Ishmael Beah is a graduate of Oberlin College with a B.A. in Political Science and resides in Brooklyn, New York.