Praise for the audio edition of A Long Way
Gone:
"Actor Dominic Hoffman's restrained voice, edged with sadness
and poignancy, conveys Beah's difficult emotional state." -
Library Journal
"This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12,
gets swept up in Sierra Leone''s civil war goes beyond even the
best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child
abducted into the horrors of warfare...Told in clear, accessible
language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this
memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war
and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts
worldwide."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux), is unforgettable testimony that Africa's
children-millions of them dying and orphaned by preventable
diseases, hundreds of thousands of them forced into battle-have
eyes to see and voices to tell what has happened. And what voices!
How is it possible that 26-year-old Beah, a nonnative English
speaker, separated from his family at age 12, taught to maim and to
kill at 13, can sound such notes of family happiness, of
friendship under duress, of quiet horror? No outsider could
have written this book, and it's hard to imagine that many
insiders could do so with such acute vision, stark language, and
tenderness. It is a heart-rending achievement." -Melissa
Fay Greene, Elle Magazine
"Hideously effective in conveying the essential horror of his
experiences."-Kirkus Reviews
"Extraordinary . . . A ferocious and desolate
account of how ordinary children were turned into professional
killers." -The Guardian UK
"A Long Way Gone is one of the most important
war stories of our generation. The arming of children
is among the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so
little about it because the children themselves are swallowed up by
the very wars they are forced to wage. Ishmael Beah
has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of
its most eloquent chroniclers. We ignore his
message at our peril." -Sebastian Junger, author of A
Death in Belmont and A Perfect Storm
"This is a beautifully written book about a
shocking war and the children who were forced to fight it.
Ishmael Beah describes the unthinkable in calm,
unforgettable language; his memoir is an important
testament to the children elsewhere who continue to be
conscripted into armies and militias." -Steve Coll, author of
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin
Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001,
winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general
Nonfiction
"This is a wrenching, beautiful, and mesmerizing
tale. Beah''s amazing saga provides a haunting lesson
about how gentle folks can be capable of great brutalities as well
goodness and courage. It will leave you
breathless."
-Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American
Life
"A Long Way Gone hits you hard in the gut with Sierra
Leone's unimaginable brutality and then it touches your soul with
unexpected acts of kindness. Ishmael Beah's story tears
your heart to pieces and then forces you to put it back together
again, because if Beah can emerge from such horror with his
humanity in tact, it's the least you can do."
-Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle: A
Memoir