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Review
'A corrosive, eloquent and illuminating account of a child soldier's life, and it makes you look at the news with a fresh eye. What he has done is to make his situation imaginable for us, and stop us from simply turning away in horror. That is the best gift he could give the world.' Hilary Mantel
‘Gives the war a painfully human dimension and reminds us of its pointlessness…If the pathos of this book helps to persuade the puppeteers of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers fighting today to put down their guns, then Beah will have done more than all those A47s ever have.' The Times
‘A lucid, pensive, beautifully written account of a madness that he has the bravery to revisit head–on.’ TLS
‘Few of those boy soldiers have told their story as eloquently as Ishmael Beah.’ Sunday Telegraph
'The arming of children is one of the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so little about it because the children themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage. Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. “A Long Way Gone” is one of the most important war stories of our generation. We ignore its message at our peril.' Sebastian Junger
'A ferocious and desolate account of how ordinary children were turned into professional killers.' The Guardian
'Beah makes no excuses for his actions and is entirely lacking in self pity, but the honesty of his memoir reveals the full horror of a war in which the brutalisation of children was commonplace…Beah is a living testament to the endurance of the human spirit.' Sunday Times
‘Ishmael Beah has achieved the seemingly impossible task of helping us to imagine the reality behind the statistics by empathising with just one of the many thousands of children who are soldiers around the world – a remarkable book.’ The Guardian
Sebastian Junger
'The arming of children is one of the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so little about it because the children themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage. Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. "A Long Way Gone" is one of the most important war stories of our generation. We ignore its message at our peril.'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ismael Beah's story of being caught up in the civil war of Sierra Leone, of witnessing and then taking part in atrocities, is simply written, but no less powerful for that. He writes as a child of 12, although it is clear from his afterword that he has chosen this style to give greater impact, and that as a wrtier he is capable of a much more sophisticated analysis.
This approach works and definitely makes the book accessible to teenagers, particularly teenage boys.
He has a great ear for the nuances of childhood, you can immediately connect to both his feelings of excitement, loneliness and fear in the earlier parts of the book.
His book describes all the initiations of a child soldier - the drug addiction and violent initiation ceremonies, but skims somewhat over what happened between being forced to be a child soldier and his rehabilitation.
You are also left with a feeling that some of the process of rehabilitation has been left private. There is a difficult line between honesty and indulging the reader's voyeurism. this is not a book which indulges in violence for its own sake.
That said, Beah's description of what must have been an incredibly painful journey towards self-acceptance and rehabilitation is sometimes skimmed over. He was a child, with no real choices, but he also did some terrible things and deep down he must know that. There is none of the masterful, and intensely painful, self analysis of, say, Roman Frister, in his book "The Cap, or the Price of a Life". Perhaps Beah is still too young to write that book of his life, but I think he may have it in him.
So, an excoriating description of life in Sierra Leone, which leaves you to fill in some the gaps yourself. An important book, because it is an honest account of a devastating issue, and an extraordinary work, given Beah's youth and disrupted education. Recommended for adults and older teenagers.
However, Beah's great work on this subject is, I suspect, still ahead of him.
This approach works and definitely makes the book accessible to teenagers, particularly teenage boys.
He has a great ear for the nuances of childhood, you can immediately connect to both his feelings of excitement, loneliness and fear in the earlier parts of the book.
His book describes all the initiations of a child soldier - the drug addiction and violent initiation ceremonies, but skims somewhat over what happened between being forced to be a child soldier and his rehabilitation.
You are also left with a feeling that some of the process of rehabilitation has been left private. There is a difficult line between honesty and indulging the reader's voyeurism. this is not a book which indulges in violence for its own sake.
That said, Beah's description of what must have been an incredibly painful journey towards self-acceptance and rehabilitation is sometimes skimmed over. He was a child, with no real choices, but he also did some terrible things and deep down he must know that. There is none of the masterful, and intensely painful, self analysis of, say, Roman Frister, in his book "The Cap, or the Price of a Life". Perhaps Beah is still too young to write that book of his life, but I think he may have it in him.
So, an excoriating description of life in Sierra Leone, which leaves you to fill in some the gaps yourself. An important book, because it is an honest account of a devastating issue, and an extraordinary work, given Beah's youth and disrupted education. Recommended for adults and older teenagers.
However, Beah's great work on this subject is, I suspect, still ahead of him.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This story is simply told. There are no fancy literary flourishes designed to manipulate the reader's emotions and no eloquent explanations designed to sway us to a particular viewpoint. It is the simple story of a child unwittingly caught up in the appalling violence of civil war. The narrator tells his own story. It is the story of how civil war destroys the normality of life in his village, of how he runs from the advancing violence, but eventually cannot avoid being drafted into its very heart as a child soldier. He describes the process of desensitization that allows him to survive the horrors he participates in and the even more difficult process of learning to re-engage with civil society once he has been rescued from the battlefield.
Some readers may be disappointed by the fact that the book provides only very limited historical background to the conflict in Sierra Leone and by the fact that the narrator engages in only very limited introspection about what he has experienced. The plot also contains a few scenes that come across as a bit contrived and unlikely, but none of this detracts from the picture that is painted of the horrors of child soldiers involved in civil war. The power of the story lies in its simplicity and in the fact that we know it is being told by someone who lived through it.
Some readers may be disappointed by the fact that the book provides only very limited historical background to the conflict in Sierra Leone and by the fact that the narrator engages in only very limited introspection about what he has experienced. The plot also contains a few scenes that come across as a bit contrived and unlikely, but none of this detracts from the picture that is painted of the horrors of child soldiers involved in civil war. The power of the story lies in its simplicity and in the fact that we know it is being told by someone who lived through it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The subtitle to this is `Memoirs of a Boy Soldier' and Ishmael Beah paints a stunning and horrifying picture of what human beings are capable of doing. The acts that he's party to, the acts that he perpetrates, are horrendous in their violence and their cruelty, and yet Ishmael's background story - how he loses his family and everything he has known and is manipulated and coerced into his actions - gives these acts a dramatic context.
Reading this true story will stir strong emotions and, in the case of this reviewer at least, put things into perspective; for those thinking life is tough with credit crunches and expensive petrol prices, think again...
Reading this true story will stir strong emotions and, in the case of this reviewer at least, put things into perspective; for those thinking life is tough with credit crunches and expensive petrol prices, think again...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Aamzing, poetic, and heartbreaking.
.`A Long Way Gone' has touched me so much that, for the first time in a long time, I don't want to immediately dive into my next book. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Kelly A19
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Seah
I bought this book to take with me on holiday and although it's not the usual 'holiday read' the book itself was brilliant. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Rachel
I wrote about the main character for a postgraduate essay
I read this book as part of a university assignment. The author is also the main character in the book. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mearso
I take off my hat
Congratulations for telling such a compelling and well-polished story. You did a great job making it insightful and engaging. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Sancho Mahle
An Excellent Read!!
From front to back, I loved it!! The book definitely stirs you up to want to act. I hope it has the same inspiring affect on all those who read it. :)
Published 15 months ago by Harii
Excellent but a little unfulfilling
I really enjoyed the guide but for some reason it left me a little bit unfulfilled - I realise child soldiers are an emotive subject and it conveyed well the sense of isolation... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Tremayne
Good book
Bought this book for my daughter, who had been studying it at school.
She can't put it down.
She can't put it down.
Published on 12 Jan 2010 by J. J. Clarke
Gripping read
An absorbing a often very sad book that I quickly finished in a couple of days. Highly recommended.
Published on 18 Sep 2009 by Severn
The true story of a child soldier
Ishmael Beah. A child soldier. Sierra Leone, Africa, early 1990s, a country lacerated by civil war. This is the testimony of a child whose parents and siblings were killed. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2009 by I LOVE BOOKS
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