Scottsdale. Home to many, beautiful oasis in the desert to me. As a resident of the Scottsdale community, I am fortunately disconnected from a vast majority of big city issues and topical tragedies. In Beasts of No Nation Uzondinma Iweala (the author) brings me back to reality. The novel superbly parallels the actuality of this world, not the Scottsdale one that I have grown accustomed too, but the chilling and unforgiving earth along with its prominent issues.
After finishing this riveting book, I took a step back to fully appreciate all of my good fortune. The story describes an Africa country ravaged by war in which a young man, Agu, gets thrown into. Through his tenure with the Army, Agu experiences many life-changing events, most of which are typical to that of any young man in a lowly developed country. As I mentioned earlier, I am fortunately alleviated from all real world stress due to my geographic luck and magnificent upbringing. Yet, Beasts of No Nation vividly reflects the real world outside of my protected home. People are murdered. Women are sexually assaulted. Children are killed and families are destroyed. Unfortunate? Absolutely. Reality? No doubt about it. The descriptive and impeccable verbiage schooled me on the world outside of little old Scottsdale and furthered my understanding of the outside world. Once I concluded the book, I realized that war and heinous crimes actually happen and nothing is perfect. I was heavily intrigued throughout the book primarily because I was delving into material that, honestly, I never had to deal with. Reading Beasts of No Nation truly changed me and educated on all of the real world problems with such a flawless description of reality.


As I was reading the novel I realized something. Although it may be a book of fiction, these actions occur in our world. More so, it is a plaguing issue that is related to many third world countries nowadays and has taken precedence as one of the more significant issues in our time. Iweala does a very good job in emphasizing how important these conflicts were for the people involved in them and how they impacted their lives accordingly. I found myself searching the web for countries with similar properties and came up with great results. It appeared to me that actions such as the ones depicted in this book actually take place in a fair amount of countries. I was rather shocked to see how a fictitious story could provide such powerful insight into our world.
One word that commonly came to mind while I was reading this book was eye-opening. Reading Beasts of No Nation bettered me as a person as I was much more appreciative of what I have. I had no idea how miserable and tragic lives could be in foreign countries, but this novel will forever keep me grounded. Two thumbs up.