Product Description

Agu is just a boy when war arrives at his village. His mother and sister are rescued by the UN, while he and his father remain to fight the rebels. 'Run!' shouts his father when the rebels arrive. And Agu does run. Straight into the rebels' path.

In a vivid, sparkling voice, Agu tells the story of what happens to him next. His story is shocking and painful, and completely unforgettable.

BEASTS OF NO NATION gives us an extraordinary portrait of the chaos and violence of war. Unlike anything else we have read this year, it is a gripping and remarkable debut. (20050819)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #407951 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 142 pages

Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace
‘This is a work of visceral urgency and power: it heralds the arrival of a major talent’

Review
' This is a work of visceral urgency and power: it heralds the arrival of a major talent' (Amitav Ghosh 20060610)

'So scorched by loss and anger that it’s hard to hold and so gripping in its sheer hopeless lifeforce that it's hard to put down.'

(Ali Smith, Guardian 20050910)

'The power of his material and its hideous relevance rolls all before it ... This book about children that is in no sense a children’s book deserves to be read'

(Independent 20051029)

‘This is an extraordinary book … horrifying expose … vivid … It casts a powerful, if gruesome spell’

(Sunday Telegraph 20051106)

‘Iweala makes a compelling story from experience which in its nature defies articulation … Uzodinma Iweala’s is a confident and promising new voice’

(Times Literary Supplement 20051106)

'Gives a name, a voice and a heart to one of Africa’s innumerable child soldiers … This is urgent writing, starkly unsentimental and convincing'

(Observer 20051106)

‘His riveting revelations… make this a truly shocking and unforgettable book.’

(Waterstone’s Books Quarterly 20051006)

 ‘First-time novelist Uzodinma Iweala has made a virtue of simplicity and, in beautifully unadorned language, has captured the universal tragedy of war and its victims.’

(Telegraph/Seven, Sally Cousins 20050901)

 ‘Linguistically ingenious, Beasts of No Nation is a remarkable debut, a hugely resonant discourse on an uncomfortable subject.’

(Observer, Helen Zaltzman )

‘This sad, unforgettable novel is a fitting testament to the countless Agus who continue to kill and be killed across that most tragic of continents.’

(Daily Telegraph, David Isaacson )

 ‘A chilling work of fiction that has visceral impact.’

(Guardian/The Guide )

'Compelling ... perturbing, painful and powerful'

(Irish Independent )

'A stunningly mature debut'

(Big Issue )

'Compelling, haunting and refreshing'

(The Review )

'Stream-like sentences that convey irrestible, rushing activitiy ... Iweala’s powerful debut recalls Saro-Wiwa’s first-person masterpiece of a soldier-boy'

(The Times )

'A searing first novel'

(Independent )

'Beasts of No Nation is written with the authority of someone who knows what they're talking about'

(London Review of Books )

‘A simple and brutal account of war … Beasts of No Nation is a raw, compelling first novel’

(Literary Review )

Amitav Ghosh
'This is a work of visceral urgency and power: it heralds the
arrival of a major talent'

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Customer Reviews

Beasts of No Nation
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 USURPER AND OTHER STORIES, THE BIAFRA STORY, TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS, 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 .

Essential Reading
I found this book absolutely gripping. It’s the perfect length for even the most time-pushed, attention deficient of us – this vital tale of becoming set in war-torn West Africa had me so immersed that I devoured it in one reading.

Although the overall theme of the book is extremely harrowing, Iweala doesn’t overplay the horrific elements in his story. Instead, because the story is told from the perspective of a shell-shocked child in his naïve, unfamiliar, and awkward vernacular, such events are recounted with an emotional detachment similar in effect to the work of Primo Levi. There is more for our imagination to engage with, this serves only to make it more moving.

Momentum in the narrative is generated through the growing compassion felt for our young narrator, Agu, as he is wrenched from an idyllic and precocious childhood into complicity with a world of senseless violence and civil war that he is too young to understand. He faces an acute dilemma – to kill or be killed – and is in a permanent state of conflict as the morals he learned from the warm and peaceful community that nurtured him sit at odds with his instinct for survival, which lies in a tragic necessity to please the brutal guerilla group that pillaged his village and probably killed his father.

Detached descriptions of savage rape and murder are juxtaposed with touching recollections of his loving upbringing and the culture that he is now, unwillingly, helping to destroy. These pre-war accounts tell of a West African (we are never given a specific country) way of life and heighten a sense of loss and injustice, of innocents getting dragged into a conflict that they never wanted.

If you have read books like A Clockwork Orange (also a book about coming of age, but set in a fictional dystopia rather than in an historical anarchy) you will not have difficulty adjusting to the language Iweala deploys – it’s all in English, you just have to mind the tenses. You will probably also really enjoy and appreciate the vernacular style that takes you much deeper into the character and the rhythms of the world that he describes.

These days it’s all too easy to become absorbed with the war our government started in Iraq, and to forget all the other, often more atrocious wars taking place elsewhere. This book raises awareness of just how intolerable life is for so many people in West Africa, and inspires one to read more about this situation. If our governments were as committed as they say they are to creating world peace, they would address issues of poverty and dictatorship in Africa, rather than creating more death and disorder by channeling their resources on the oil-rich Arab states.

Great book!! :-)
Beasts of No Nation is a great book!! It tells the story of a little boy, Agu who becomes a child soldier after an unfortunate turn of events in his village.

It's also a story of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. Even after "seeing more terrible thing than ten thousand men, and doing more terrible thing than twenty thousand men", Agu remembers ..."I am also having mother once, and she is also loving me."

As he tells this heartbreaking story, the author maintains his sense of humour without trivializing Agu's experiences. You won't be disappointed!
Lande says: