The author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier says, "I decided to write because I wanted to shed light on this experience from my own personal point of view. I never claimed I was going to write a history of the war."
Full story follows.
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY
Associated Press
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Author Ishmael Beah disputed reports that his best-selling 2007 memoir about serving as a child soldier in Sierra Leone contained inconsistencies.
Beah, speaking with The Associated Press during his first trip back to Sierra Leone since the book was published, defended his version of events in "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," saying his memoir is based on personal recollection and is not a historical account.
"I decided to write because I wanted to shed light on this experience from my own personal point of view. I never claimed I was going to write a history of the war," he said in an interview Tuesday. "Only Ishmael Beah can tell his experience. I wrote the memoirs based on my experience as far as my memory could remember."
Beah's memoir was hailed as a landmark in wartime writing -- but some are skeptical, questioning how the 27-year-old is able to recall incidents that happened a decade earlier when, according to his own account, he was often high on drugs.
A report in The Australian newspaper cited residents near Mattru Jong, not far from Beah's native village, as saying a major battle described in the book took place in 1995, two years later than the author's account. The newspaper cited locals who said Beah could not have been a soldier in 1993 because he was still in school.
Although no one is questioning that Beah witnessed the horrors of Sierra Leone's civil war, the revised timeline would mean that he was significantly older -- nearly 15 instead of 12 -- when he was conscripted, altering the balance of a book praised for offering an unprecedented window into the world of a child soldier.
Beah said he had already left school in 1993. He said "the major attack on Mattru Jong took place in 1995, but there were other attacks in 1993."
Many memoirs published in recent years have included disclaimers specifically because memory is fallible. Beah's book does not include one, which opened him to criticism. He acknowledges the book is based on his memory of events and that there is little proof to back it up.
"It was not like I was going through the war and thinking then that I was going to write a book and record evidence for production," he said.
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