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
words: 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.