A long way gone by Ishmael Beah

New York City, 1998

My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“Did you witness some of the fighting?”
“Everyone in the country did.”
“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.”

We watch the news almost every day. The media shows us images of countries in war, children without arms and legs, people that have lost everything they've got. Still, to us, this is nothing but images. It doesn't stuck to our retina. Why is that? I think it's because you can't take something in when you see it from the outside. This book gave me an inside look. And it's stuck in my mind forever.

Ismael Beah's book is written in an astonishing language that touches your heart and makes you turn pages fast. At times it reminded me of “Anne Frank's diary”, the ingenious and pure choice of words while telling about his time as a child-solider. He was only twelve years old when he first picked up an AK-47 and started to shoot. He was a healthy boy a couple of months earlier, so what happened? What can make a person do such horrible things? This book made me understand, and I think every person in the world should have read this book before they die. Ismael Beah has wrote a classic masterpiece.

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