Beasts of No Nation

Reviews / Votes

A work of visceral urgency and power: it heralds the arrival of a major talent * Amitav Ghosh * Extraordinary . . . you don't come across writing like this very often * Bookseller * So scorched by loss and anger that it's hard to hold and so gripping in its sheer hopeless lifeforce that it's hard to put down * Guardian * A harrowing and compelling vision . . . the narrator's voice is so authentic you have to check you are still reading fiction . . . This is a novel which leaves an impression like a blood-soaked hand print, disturbing not only for the terror around this cleaving, pulverising slayer, but the terror turning to 'ennui' within him. To call it shocking would be to do it a disservice. To call the writing beautiful would hardly be praise. To call the book staggering would be an understatement * Waterstones Books Quarterly * The power of his material and its hideous relevance rolls all before it . . . This book about children that is in no sense a children's book deserves to be read * Independent * An extraordinary book . . . horrifying expose . . . vivid . . . . It casts a powerful, if gruesome spell * Sunday Telegraph * Iweala makes a compelling story from experience which in its nature defies articulation . . . Uzodinma Iweala's is a confident and promising new voice * Times Literary Supplement * Gives a name, a voice and a heart to one of Africa's innumerable child soldiers . . . This is urgent writing, starkly unsentimental and convincing * Observer * Compelling . . . perturbing, painful and powerful * Irish Independent * Stream-like sentences that convey irrestible, rushing activitiy . . . Iweala's powerful debut recalls Saro-Wiwa's first-person masterpiece of a soldier-boy * The Times * A simple and brutal account of war . . . Beasts of No Nation is a raw, compelling first novel * Literary Review *