A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Average customer rating: 5.0

A Long Way Gone
Obviously coached by an editor
A looking glass - into the heart of a boy soldier
I could not imagine
easy read

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Product Group: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0374105235
2007-02-13

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Book Description

<div><div><div>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.”</div>

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

Customer Reviews:

A Long Way Gone.......2007-06-12

A searing and painful book about the experiences of a young man's struggles after his village and family have been wiped out by the rebels in Sierra Leone. The descriptions of physical sufffering are wrenching as is the description of his metamorphosis from victim to perpetrator and back again to young man simply trying to live his life after such horrendous experiences. It is well written and authentic. I greatly admire his courage in describing for us what must have been painful events to live through again in the writing.

Obviously coached by an editor.......2007-06-12

This was a good book but I would have preferred if it had been produced as fiction rather than nonfiction, or maybe I just wish it had been written better. It was a pretty dry read in many places. The story is intense and the boy sweet. I could definately empathize with the boy for doing what he needed to to survive. I especially liked how he described how his feelings manifested physically. The writing was obviously influenced by an editor, which took away from the story for me. The book definately serves its purpose, to enlighten us about the plight of child soldiers, but it could have been written better.

A looking glass - into the heart of a boy soldier.......2007-06-12

This book is very eye opening. It humanizes the in-human boy solders. Prior to this book I had a preconceived idea of what a child soldier was and it was easy to detest them. Now that I have read this book I have a changed my view on the whole child soldier epidemic. I now see them as victims in a heinous situation instead of a further cause in the heinous situation.

This book takes you through a journey that covers not only different geographic locations but also a full range of emotional changes of the author. This book is very easy to read and follow. I am only a social reader and this book only took me a week to finish from cover to cover.

I could not imagine.......2007-06-10

We hear about boy soldiers on media, but I could not imagine what it really is, why and how, until I read this book.

easy read.......2007-06-10

great story... easy ready... sad but engaging. I am glad I read this book

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