More Congo reading

Two more for the springboard reading list. Jeff suggested Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Memoir of a Boy soldier. There’s an interesting controversy about this. The newspaper The Australian claims that the events described in the book happen two years later than Beah says they did. This would mean he was fifteen, not thirteen. While still very young, he wouldn’t then meet the UN definition of a “child soldier”. There are various conflicting sources on it, and you can read Beah’s response of you search for it. To me though, the points about the Australian’s claim is that they don’t mention any inaccuracy other than his age. Is there anything else which isn’t true? If not, it’s still a useful book despite not strictly being a “child” soldier’s memoir.

Secondly, the evidence they give seems to revolve around “evidence is available on the internet…” which, without anything concrete, doesn’t do much for me.  It does seem that there is room for a question mark over the book though.

Next book – Barbara Kingsolver,  The Poisonwood Bible, about missionaries in 1960s Congo. It is mentioned in Tim Butcher’s book – so it would be impermissible to ignore such a direct link in the chain! After that I think I’ll try to break out of the Congo, since the whole idea was to read as widely as possible.