Beasts of No Nation: A Novel
The 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction went to Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation, a novel about a child soldier.
Work Information
A child-soldier novel that confronts violence, loss, and survival.
The Los Angeles Times marked the novel as the First Fiction winner. Told through the experience of a child soldier, it presents war as immediate and devastating.
Book Information
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- 2005-11-08
- Pages
- 160 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.4 x 1.65 x 18.08 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780060798673
- ISBN-10
- 006079867X
- Price
- 2758 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Coming of Age
The harrowing, utterly original debut novel by Uzodinma Iweala about the life of a child soldier in a war-torn African country—now a critically-acclaimed Netflix original film directed by Cary Fukunaga ( True Detective ) and starring Idris Elba ( Mandela, The Wire ). As civil war rages in an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist of this stunning debut novel, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. 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 continues to spin further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. In a powerful, strikingly original voice, Uzodinma Iweala leads the reader through the random travels, betrayals, and violence that mark Agu’s new community. Electrifying and engrossing, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extraordinary new writer.
Uzodinma Iweala received the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Beasts of No Nation. He was also named one of Granta ’s Best Young American Novelists. He was the CEO of the Africa Center and is currently a fellow at the Katë Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg; a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and an advisor at UNSECO. A graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he lives in Germany with his wife and son.
Reviews
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I was gripped from the very beginning, and though I hoped for a change in language, I came to love it midway through. The author's mastery is not up for discussion, and I think Agu's transition into a boy soldier could be said to be representative of others like him. The adrenaline rush, the fear for his own life, the indoctrination in the us-versus-them story, sodomy, and the drug which entices him to commit all those atrocities could well be explained in the real world. As with all of these people spreading havoc, the gang mentality is classically expressed when Agu feels sad at his friend's passing, but would 'like' the KPEDU sound his machete makes as he massacres other innocent lives. And it ends brilliantly as not every one of such boys becomes whole again, or even finds his family. I hope he became a doctor in the end...or a big man...;)
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Incredibly dark and graphic book, but a necessary read if you want to discover a part of the reality many child soldiers have had to face.
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I was blown away by this book. The author's writing style/vernacular of the character/plot takes a little getting used to, but contrary to other negative reviews saying it takes away from the book/story, I thought that it enhanced it to a whole new level. Flowing prose and beautiful language can be nice, but this is much more real, putting it much deeper in the perspective and psyche of one from Africa. Iweala does an excellent job of preserving the language and writing style through the book, and I for one thought it was brilliantly done. The book also raises amazing questions about evil, struggle, and forgiveness, among many others. I found myself dumbstruck at the end, constantly pondering the questions that were in my head and amazed at how beautifully Iweala conveyed the ideas. This book was great on every level, and I tell everyone about when asked for recommendations.
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Recreating the thoughts of a child ripped from childhood into the netherworld of a child soldier is never going to be easy. Then rendering it in a form of patois to be read by those from many miles away adds to the difficulty. This is a classic Hobbesian novel (nasty, brutish and short) Fortunately for us this is a shortened version of what many child soldiers suffered. The reader, I suspect, not easily enduring the reality. It is a horrible story, well told.
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It's a good book! Just real different from the movie but still a really good book. So 5 stars. :)