A Long Way Gone

Description

At twelve, Ishmael Beah flees a rebel attack on his village and begins wandering through a Sierra Leone consumed by civil war. Separated from ordinary family life and surrounded by terror, he is eventually absorbed into an army unit that indoctrinates him, supplies him with drugs, and forces him to fight. By thirteen, violence has transformed both his daily existence and his sense of himself. After three years, UNICEF removes him from the unit, beginning a difficult rehabilitation and return to civilian life with help from his uncle. Beah’s memoir moves from childhood flight through coercion and recovery, bearing firsthand witness to how war recruits the young, normalizes brutality, and leaves survival inseparable from the work of memory and public testimony.

Themes