- Hardcover: 160 pages
- Publisher: Harper (Oct 27 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 006079867X
- ISBN-13: 978-0060798673
- Product Dimensions: 18.5 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#376,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #28 in Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Multicultural Stories > African Canadian
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Iweala's visceral debut is unrelenting in its brutality and unremitting in its intensity. Agu, the precocious, gentle son of a village schoolteacher father and a Bible-reading mother, is dragooned into an unnamed West African nation's mad civil war—a slip of a boy forced, almost overnight, to shoulder a soldier's bloody burden. The preteen protagonist is molded into a fighting man by his demented guerrilla leader and, after witnessing his father's savage slaying, by an inchoate need to belong to some kind of family, no matter how depraved. He becomes a killer, gripped by a muddled sense of revenge as he butchers a mother and daughter when his ragtag unit raids a defenseless village; starved for both food and affection, he is sodomized by his commandant and rewarded with extra food scraps and a dry place to sleep. The subject of the 23-year-old novelist's story—Iweala is American born of Nigerian descent—is gripping enough. But even more stunning is the extraordinarily original voice with which this tale is told. The impressionistic narration by a boy constantly struggling to understand the incomprehensible is always breathless, often breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking. Its odd singsong cadence and twisted use of tense take a few pages to get used to, but Iweala's electrifying prose soon enough propels a harrowing read. (Nov. 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* "I am not bad boy. I am not bad boy. I am soldier and soldier is not bad if he is killing." Set in an unnamed West African country, Iweala's first novel shows civil war from a child's viewpoint. After his mother and sister escape and his father is killed, the traumatized young narrator is discovered by guerrilla fighters. Frightened and alone, he joins the men, becoming a soldier in an impoverished army of terror headed by a charismatic and treacherous leader who tells his young followers that killing "is like falling in love. You cannot be thinking about it." Writing in the boy's West African English, Iweala distills his story to the most urgent and visceral atrocities, and the scenes of bloodshed and rape are made more excruciating by the lyrical, rhythmic language. In the narrator's memories of village life, biblical stories, and creation myths, Iweala explores the mutable separation between human and beast and a child's struggle to rediscover his own humanity after war: "I am some sort of beast or devil," the boy says, "But I am also having mother once, and she is loving me." Readers will come away feeling shattered by this haunting, original story. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New and amazing author,
By
This review is from: Beasts Of No Nation: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is just a story well outlined, about a child soldiers experience during the civil war of a country, wow its such an amazing writing and kinda pathetic story as well but it was so good to the end that it ended great, you will never be bored reading the book, the jokes came in at the right time and hmm the english(pidgin) is a plus. I recommend the book a million times
3.0 out of 5 stars
if there's absolutely nothing else in your wishlist you'd rather read...,
By MacManji (Toronto) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Beasts Of No Nation: A Novel (Paperback)
a very simple plot that scratches on many surfaces but never penetrates any interest - characters and circumstances are grossly glossed. only b/c of the narrator's tongue/voice/language is it passable (and extremely short, so not enough time to get fed up), else nothing new/interesting here.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beasts of No Nation,
By Mikhail "mike" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Beasts Of No Nation: A Novel (Hardcover)
The BEASTS OF NO NATION story reigns true in the countless civil wars that have ravaged Africa from the East (Somalia, Congo, Rwanda) to the South (Mozambique and Angola) the West (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria) and in Algeria and Sudan. It is mirrored in the light of the Palestinian. The underlying theme of teenage soldiers being used for a cause against their comprehension is a dehumanizing crime that should be met with the harshest of punishment against the perpetrators. Also seen in TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS, THE BIAFRA STORY, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, we find that the scar of war leaves a haunting legacy in the lives of children, especially the children who killed .
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