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.
Awards
Winner of New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Award (Nonfiction) 2007 and Christopher Awards (Books for Adults) 2008 and Alex Awards 2008. Commended for L.A. Times Book Prize (Current Interest) 2007 and Tayshas Reading 2008 and Capitol Choices: Noteworthy Books for Children and Teens (Fourteen and Up) 2008 and Grand Canyon Reader Award (Teen) 2010. Short-listed for Quill Awards (Biography/Memoir) 2007 and Quill Awards (Debut Author) 2007 and Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award 2009 and Delaware Diamonds Award (High School) 2008.



Book Information
ISBN 9780374105235
Author Ishmal Beah
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc