Ishmael Beah, geboren 1980 in Sierra Leone, war zwölf, als der Bürgerkrieg in sein Leben einbrach. Er verlor seine Eltern und seinen Bruder im Krieg. Nach drei Jahren als Kindersoldat in der Nationalarmee gelangte er mithilfe von UNICEF in ein Rehabilitationscamp. Der Weg zurück in die Normalität wird lang und schmerzhaft. Heute lebt Ishmael Beah in New York. Er arbeitet für Human Rights Watch und engagiert sich weltweit für vom Krieg betroffene Kinder.

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Child soldiershave been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. Ishmael Beah, now 25 years old, tells how at the age oftwelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, 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.--From publisher description.A human rights activist offers a firsthand account of war from the perspective of a former child soldier, detailing the violent civil war that wracked his native Sierra Leone and the government forces that transformed a gentle young boy into a killer as a member of the army.