num_pages: 9
description: This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. 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 it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone Beah , now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story in his own 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. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
language: English
title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
titlecomplete: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
characters: Talloi, "Junior" Beah, Kanei, Alhaji, Musa, Moriba, Esther, Jumah, Ishmael Beah, Khalilou, Saidu
genres: History, School, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Sierra Leone, War, Biography Memoir, Africa, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 184458
places: New York City, New York, Sierra Leone
awards: awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: ALA Alex Award, awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Lincoln Award, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: NAIBA Book of the Year
category: Nonfiction, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award
publisher: Macmillan Audio