A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah Harper

Perennial £7.99

Sierra Leone is currently the second least developed country in the world according to the UN, with an average life-expectancy of 40, an illiteracy rate of two-thirds and hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the 11-year civil war. Ishmael Beah's bestselling account of his three years as a child soldier and subsequent rehabilitation with Unicef is intended not only to highlight the mind-boggling horrors of his own experience - during which he killed countless people under the influence of amphetamines, marijuana and cocaine cut with gunpowder - but also to provide a note of optimism for the country. Beah, now living in America and working for Human Rights Watch, offers himself as an example of someone almost destroyed by horrific circumstances but redeemed by the stoical love of the people who rescued him.