Beasts of No Nation
Review by Harriet Parker-Bass
Beasts of No Nation
by Uzodinma Iweala
HarperCollins
$16.95
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From the earliest days of colonialism there has been something mysterious and remote about the 'Dark Continent'. Events in Africa seem to stay much more on the periphery of our collective consciousness than say, events in Europe or the Middle East. During the numerous civil wars in Africa, we did however, learn about the boy soldiers. “Beasts of No Nation” is the stunning debut novel by Uzodinma Iweala that tells the story of the young boy Agu who is conscripted at gunpoint.
The setting is somewhere in West Africa… we do not know the country, we do not know the reasons for the war, we do not know on which side young Agu is forced to fight. None of that matters. What matters is the dehumanizing process of turning a boy into a killing machine. Agu lives in a small village with his loving mother, his father who is a school teacher and his little sister. He loves books, especially the bible, and he loves school. He reads so much that his mother calls him ‘professor’. Into this life comes war. His mother and sister are evacuated by the United Nations and he sees his father shot. He is kidnapped and starved, tortured and abused until his will is broken. His need for a family is so great, that he accepts the Commandant and other rag-tag soldiers as his family. The first time Agu kills, the Commandant has his hands over Agu’s hands holding the machete.
Agu tries to understand the killing. He thinks that he is a soldier and soldiers are not bad. Soldiers kill. So if he kills, as a soldier, it is the right thing to do. But on another level he knows how wrong it is to kill. He imagines that he is seen as a beast or the devil. In a heartbreaking statement, Agu says “I am all of this thing (a beast), but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me.”
This poignant and brutal story is told by young Agu in a kind of broken pidgin English that takes a few pages to get used to. It then becomes almost lyrical …..a song of sadness. And an enriching read.
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