I picked up Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation last week nudged by a memory of the positive press the book got in late 2005.
“Astonishing,” “staggering,” “harrowing,” “startling,” and “stunning” ring through the mostly positive reviews. Maslin’s unfortunately titled review praises the book while pointing to its lack of subtlety. The subject matter—child soldiers in Africa—is dire and the prose distinctive. Unlike other readers, though, I found Iweala’s avoidance of the past and future tenses annoying: there’s only so much present and past progressive I can take. And in the end, I don’t think the stylistic choice solved the difficulty of representing an African child’s war history.
This interview touches on one of the women whose war history inspired the story; and this longer one explores the novel’s language . And here’s an NPR interview which like much of the other coverage focuses as much on the child soldier problem rather than on the writing.
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