Ishmael Beah

Writer Ishmael Beah has experienced the carnage of Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war first hand. After losing his family, Beah was recruited at the age of 13 to fight for rebel forces....

Ishmael Beah, the author of the bestselling memoir A Long Way Gone, about Sierra Leone’s civil war and the fate of child soldiers, talks about his first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, about postwar life in Sierra Leone.  At the center of the story are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown after the civil war to find it in ruins. They try to create a new community but they face many obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, robberies, rape, and retaliation, along with and the depredations of a foreign mining company.