A Long Way Gone

The first-person account of a 26-year-old who fought in the war in Sierra Leone as a 12-year-old boy.

“My new friends have begun to suspect that 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. There are more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide and it is estimated there are some 300,000 child soldiers fighting. 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.

Ishmael Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve in Sierra Leone, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognisable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found he was capable of truly terrible acts.

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