Beasts Of No Nation: A Novel [Hardcover]

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)
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*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
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“[Beasts of No Nation] is a work of visceral urgency…it heralds the arrival of a major talent.” (Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace )

“Uzodinma Iweala is a gifted and brave writer.” (Chris Abani, author of GraceLand )

“An astonishing debut.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )

“A harrowing account of the intoxication of violence…that offers no easy answers or explanations.” (Library Journal )

“This is an extraordinary book. . . . It’s so vivid [and] powerful.” (Sunday Telegraph )

“A raw, compelling first novel.” (Literary Review )

“A powerful debut.” (The Times of London )

“A brilliant debut. . . . This is a remarkable novel that suggests a dazzling literary future.” (People (****) )

“Remarkable. . . . Iweala never wavers from a gripping, pulsing narrative voice.” (Entertainment Weekly (A) )

“A startling debut…. Iweala’s acute imagining allows him to depict the war as a mesh of bestial pleasures and pain.” (The New Yorker )

“The hypnotic present tense, first-person narration draws the reader deep into the child soldier’s shattered psyche.” (The Washington Post )

“Searing and visceral. . . . Agu’s unblinking innocence gives the story its most powerful and disturbing beauty.” (San Diego Union-Tribune )

“An outstanding first novel. . . . Resonant, beautiful. . . . Iweala’s book will be readily embraced by readers.” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times )

“Uzodinma Iweala is receiving not just hype but praise from reviewers for the frighteningly convincing voice of a preteen soldier.” (New York Magazine )

“Searing. . . . An extraordinary debut novel.” (Time.com )

“Stark, vivid.... Written like a nightmare in progress, this story is a fever dream of voice and consciousness.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“Devastating...a raw and brutal story about the horrifying effects of cruelty and the incredible power of hope.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.

While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started -- a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality spins further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. His relationship with his commander deepens even as it darkens, and his camaraderie with a fellow soldier lends a deceptive sense of normalcy to his experience.

In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, deeply affecting novel. Both a searing take on coming-of-age and a vivid document of the dark face of war, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extaordinary new writer.

Uzodinma Iweala was born in 1982. He graduated from Harvard University, where he was a Mellon Mays Scholar and received a number of prizes for his writing, including the Eager Prize, the Horman Prize, the Le Baron Briggs Prize, and the Hoopes Prize, awarded for outstanding undergraduate thesis. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Lagos, Nigeria.