A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Title: A Long Way Gone

Author: Ishmael Beah

Type: Audiobook
Narrator: Ishmael Beah
Genre: Memoir

Series: No


Copyright: 2007
Publisher: Books on Tape

Rating: 3.5 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads

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.
What does war look 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 it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived.
In A LONG WAY GONE: MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a powerfully gripping story: 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. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and, finally, to heal. This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Feelings: 
This was a hard book to listen to as a young boy becomes a soldier and part of a war in his country. I knew of what happened in Sierra Leone but it was far away and I wasn't really sure of what happened. This book tells in detail what it was like to be a soldier in the army as a child. 

While it was difficult to listening to this audiobook I am glad that I did. Living in the stable west I can remain detached from events like these but stories bring them to the from and make us look. When we see it is hard not to want to help make things better. I don't think we have the solution but working together as during the UNICEF gathering solutions can be generated.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Sierra Leone's recent past. It does take a bit of will to read as a lot of what happens is terrible. This is a memoir that takes place during a civil war.