Home A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (ISBN: 9780374531263)

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Paperback - 2008

Name: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Price: 1.01 USD
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Author: Ishmael Beah
ISBN: 9780374531263

by Ishmael Beah

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This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war, goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare.

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From the publisher

In the #1 New York Times bestseller, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah 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.

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.

Details

Title A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author Ishmael Beah
Binding Paperback
Edition [ Edition: Repri
Pages 240
Volumes 1
Language ENG
Publisher Sarah Crichton Books, Gordonsville, Virginia, U.S.A.
Publication date 2008-08-05
Features Maps
ISBN 9780374531263 / 0374531269
Weight 0.45 lbs (0.20 kg)
Dimensions 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 in (20.83 x 13.72 x 1.78 cm)
Reading level 920
Themes
- Chronological Period: 1990's
- Catalog Heading: Biographies
- Cultural Region: West Africa
- Curriculum Strand: Biographies
- Ethnic Orientation: African American
Category Biography / Autobiography
Library of Congress subjects Sierra Leone - History - Civil War, 1991-2002, Sierra Leone - Social conditions - 1961-
Dewey Decimal Code B

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Citations

Library Journal, 01/01/2016, Page 0
New York Times Book Review, 08/24/2008, Page 24
People Weekly, 01/20/2014, Page 51

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.

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