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In an acclaimed debut novel, Uzodinma Iweala, a 23-year-old American writer of Nigerian descent, skillfully uses the voice of a preteen boy to illuminate the horror of child soldiers in Africa.
The most impressive aspect of Beasts of No Nation is the compelling transformation of the narrator Agu. A beloved child grows up in a small village, and he is turned into a desperate creature trying to survive physically and spiritually in an unspeakably brutal world.
Beasts opens with a terrorized Agu forced to choose between joining a ragtag group of soldiers or being killed. Having just seen his schoolteacher father shot to death by guerrilla fighters, Agu joins up with the Commandant.
Iweala gives Agu a childlike voice with a singsong cadence to convey the boy's bewilderment.
"I am not bad boy. I am not bad boy. I am soldier and soldier is not bad if he is killing. I am telling this to myself because soldier is supposed to be killing, killing, killing. So if I am killing, then I am only doing what is right."
This profoundly depressing novel depicts a world without hope or structure, where violence is random and meaningless. Most disturbing are the adult attempts to destroy Agu's soul.
And that is why the end resonates so deeply. "If I am telling this to you it will be making you to think that I am some sort of beast or devil. ... I am all of this thing, but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me."
Beasts of No Nation
By Uzodinma Iweala
HarperCollins, 142 pp, $16.95
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