This is how wars are fought now: by children hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. There are more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide and it is estimated there are some 300000 child soldiers fighting. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? 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 until now there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. Ishmael Beah now twenty-five years old tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve in Sierra Leone 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 he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.