A disturbing, but fascinating, look into Africa

books:


	• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 391 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A must read for every teenager and parent

This book should be read by every teenager in the United States and there parents. Our children of today think life is so hard on them. If they read this book as written by someone who had life turned upside down on them and came out with a purpose they would know that they have a pretty good life in the USA. He will never be able to get his childhood back but can now recover from the things no child should have to see or go through.

I really enjoyed this book he made you think that he was a "storyteller of his village". I do wish that he had added a couple of chapters at the end on how he is doing today and what he is going to do next.

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A disturbing, but fascinating, look into Africa

A Long Way Gone chronicles the life of a young teen in Sierra Leone who is fleeing the Rebels who are wreaking havoc in villages throughout the region. He falls in with a group of boys trying to survive, but since everyone is suspicious of groups of boys, they live a hard life. Eventually they, between the ages of 14 and 17, are conscripted into the Army to fight the Rebels.

The book is very well written. It is intense, gripping and honest. You will be amazed what was transpiring in Sierra Leone less than a decade ago. This, like so many tragedies in Africa, didn't get a lot of press until after the fact.

If you ever think you have a lot of problems or find yourself complaining a lot, you will gain a lot of perspective from this book. It is a short book (about 250 pages) and so engrossing that you will probably finish in just a few sittings. I haven't read a book this good in quite a while. Highly recommended.

Caveat: this book is not for the faint of heart. If books got ratings like movies, this would easily get an "R" rating - the war it describes is not pretty. However, I felt the book was well done and does not unnecessarily dwell on anything unpleasant.

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Prob. the best book I ever read...

Never in my life have I been so involved in a book as this one. For one person to have actually lived this life it is amazing to me. A wonderfully written book.

A long way Gone

I really liked the book. Its a story that needs to be told and Mr Beah does a great job of relating his experiences as a solider in Sierra Leone. Enlightening and heartbreaking. Highly recommended

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

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

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