Beasts of No Nation
Beasts
of No Nation is a 2005 novel by the Nigerian-American author Uzodinma
Iweala, that takes its title from Fela
Kuti's 1989 album with the same name. The book was adapted as a movie in 2015.
The
novel follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of
soldiers in an unnamed West African country. While Agu fears his commander and
many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered
by the war raging through his country, and he is at first conflicted by
simultaneous revulsion and fascination with the mechanics of war. Iweala does
not shy away from explicit, visceral detail and paints a complex, difficult
picture of Agu as a child soldier.
The book does not give any direct clue as to which country it takes place in,
and it remains undisclosed. The book is notable for its confrontational,
immersive first-person narrative.
The
theme of child soldiers draws on the author's Harvard thesis. The writer never
experienced the events he writes about in his novel unlike other books in the
same genre.
Plot summary
The
novel is about a West African boy named Agu who is forced to become a child
soldier. When war came to his family's small
village, Agu’s mother and sister are able to leave with the UN peacekeepers, but Agu is ordered to stay behind and fight with his
father and the other men of the village. When soldiers attack the village the
men realize that whether they hide or not they will eventually be killed. They
mount an attack but Agu runs away at his father's wishes.
Agu
hides and is soon found by soldiers, who coerce him to join their rebel force.
In a bloody initiation, the commander forces him to kill an unarmed man.
As
Agu is forced to leave his childhood behind, he reminisces about the past: his
family, his love of reading and school, his dream of becoming an important doctor,
and how he used to read the Bible every day. He thinks about how he and his
friend used to play at war and how this war is not the same. He fears that God
hates him for killing others, but he soon forces himself to believe that this
is what God wants, because “he is soldier and this is what soldiers do in war.”
He befriends a mute boy named Strika, and together they face the crimes and
hardships of war: looting, rape, killing, and starvation.
Agu
loses track of time, understanding only that he was a child before that war but
has become a man in a seemingly never-ending trial by fire. He wants to stop
killing but fears that so doing will get him killed by the Commandant. During
this time of war Agu and the army have very little to eat, so they eat what
they can: rats, small game, goats, and sometimes other people. The food is not
cooked enough for fear that others will see the fire, and the water is known to
contain human feces. Agu and other children in the battalion are raped by the
Commandant in return for small tokens. While Agu hates the rape, he does not
resist as he fears he will be killed by the Commandant if he does so.
The
Commandant eventually takes the battalion to the village of his birth where
they visit a brothel. Commandant's second in command, Luftenant, is shot by a
prostitute. Out of jealousy, this hit was ordered by the Commandant because
Luftenant was promoted to 'General' before him. Luftenant is then replaced by a
soldier named Rambo, thus named because of his bloodthirst.
His
wish to escape the army finally comes true when Rambo leads a successful revolt
against the Commandant in a period of agonising lack of basic necessities.
Starved, exhausted and bereaved of his only friend, Strika, Agu joins the
disbanded soldiers to try to make their way home. Agu ultimately leaves his
fellow soldiers.
In
time, he comes under the care of a missionary shelter/hospital run by a
preacher and a white woman, Amy. Agu gets new clothes and all the food and
sleep he wants and regains his health and strength. However, after having lived
through a bloody guerrilla war, the Bible no longer holds any meaning for him.
Amy invites him to share his thoughts and feelings, and Agu tells her he would
like to be a doctor and save lives so as to redeem his sins. He also tells her
about all of the evils he has had to commit during the war.
Film adaptation
A
feature film was adapted by Cary
Fukunaga, starring Abraham
Attah as Agu and Idris
Elba as the commander. The film is an
international production, shot on location in the jungles of Ghana. It
premiered on Netflix
on October 16, 2015.
References
· · Baker, Simon (4
December 2005). "A
Boy Soldier's Heart of Darkness".
The New York Times. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
·
Egbedi, Hadassah (16 October 2015). "Exclusive Interview With
Uzodinma Iweala, Author, Beasts of No Nation". Ventures Africa.
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