Beasts of No Nation

Thank you all for your patience yesterday. Mrs Titan and I had a fantastic anniversary thank you very much. It is amazing that it has already been two years. I am one lucky Titan.

So, on our Washington trip, I decided to bring the exact opposite of what people bring on vacations. It was not a beach read, not an excapist novel or science fiction or something really fun. Instead, I brought Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala. I had heard about this book from a couple of sources and it intrigued me. It is essentially about child soldiers.

Iweala writes the story as if it were a biography of a young (maybe 14?) boy, Agu, in an unnamed west African country who is forced by a rebel army to fight for them. The story is writen as if it were dictated by Agu and recorded verbatim. Iweala captures his voice almost perfectly. He speaks in pidgin english with a child's understanding of what is going on.

I was amazed and disturbed at Agu's story. The things that he and his fellow soldiers do in the story are disturbing and depressing. Once I got used to the different writing style I found it incredibly easy to read. I also couldn't put it down. In a way I feel guilty about this, it was like slowing down to stare at a car wreck. But at the same time, I had to find out what happened to Agu. How could anyone survive anything like this?

The book is short, only 142 pages long, but it is very well written and really opened my eyes about something I knew very little about. Uzodinma Iweala, a 25 year old like me, has an incredible ability to write a moving story and I hope he continues to write. Anyway, pick up this book for yourself, just be warned that it can be graphic and it is quite depressing.