Ishmael Beah has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 53 ratings. The most-rated is A Long Way Gone.
A Long Way Gone
Summary
This is how wars are fought now by children, hopped up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s. In the more than 50 violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone Beah, now 26 years old, tells a riveting story in his own words: how, at the age of 12, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By 13, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
©2007 Ishmael Beah (P)2007 Macmillan Audio
Radiance of Tomorrow
Summary
A haunting, beautiful first novel by the best-selling author of A Long Way Gone. When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of best-seller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone's civil war and the fate of child soldiers that "everyone in the world should listen to". (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called, "arguably the most listened-to African writer in contemporary literature", has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone. At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they're beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town's water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they're forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike. With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful audiobook about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.
©2014 Ishmael Beah (P)2013 Macmillan Audio
Little Family
Summary
From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of A Long Way Gone A powerful novel about young people living at the margins of society, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together. Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country's tumultuous past. Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise. Clever Khoudiemata maneuvers to keep the younger kids - athletic, pragmatic Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and especially their newest member, Namsa - safe and fed. When Elimane makes himself of service to the shadowy William Handkerchief, it seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when Khoudi comes under the spell of the "beautiful people" - the fortunate sons and daughters of the elite - the desire to resume an interrupted coming of age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist. A profound and tender portrayal of the connections we forge to survive the fate we're dealt, Little Family marks the further blossoming of a unique global voice.
©2020 Ishmael Beah (P)2020 Penguin Audio