Beasts of No Nation

Beasts of No Nation is a 2005 novel by the Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala, that takes its title from Fela Kuti's 1989 album of the same name. The book won the 2005 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was adapted as a movie in 2015.

The novel follows the journey of a young boy, Agu, who is forced to join a group of soldiers in an unnamed West African country. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first conflicted by simultaneous revulsion and fascination with the mechanics of war. Iweala does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail and paints a complex, difficult picture of Agu as a child soldier. The book does not give any direct clue as to which country it takes place in, and it remains undisclosed. The book is notable for its confrontational, immersive first-person narrative.

The theme of child soldiers draws on the author's Harvard thesis. The writer never experienced the events he writes about in his novel unlike other books in the same genre.