If you have not yet read Beasts of No Nation, maybe it is time to try. TRY is the key word here because this is not a book that is everyone's taste. In fact, this "pseudo-memoir" and the life that it reflects make for one harrowing read.
Written as a thesis at Harvard, Uzodinma Iweala offers this harrowing portrait of Agu, the preteen boy who becomes a guerilla soldier in a war-torn, unnamed West African nation, gives this anguished account while forced to serve in this batallion. He has seen his quiet preacher father killed before his eyes, his bible-reading mother and sister eveacuated by the U.N. and nowAgu relays this heartbreak, while fighting a war which he knows little about, attempting to stay alive in the mayhem and chaos surrounding him. Told in Pidgin English, Agu's haunting voice takes the reader into this descent into hell, this nightmare of violence. Once a scholarly boy, Agu is now in the throes of brutality and takes on the ways of his marauding fighters. conflicted yet fascinated by war, Agu comes to receive care at a shelter/ hospital. This totally different powerfully important novel is a dehumanizing coming-of-age tale.
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