Title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Author(s): Ishmael Beah


Editions: 2004
Subject(s): History, Civil War

Paperback: 229 pages
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books; 1st edition (August 5, 2008)
Publication date: February 13, 2007
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374531269
ISBN-13: 978-0374531263
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.8 x 8.2 inches
Cover artist: Jennifer Carrow, Michael Kamber (photograph)
Genre(s): Memoir
Pages: 240 pp (first edition)

Book Summary
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.