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Since we first blogged about Ishmael Beah some twelve months ago, A Long Way Gone – his shocking memoir of his years as a child soldier – has stunned readers far outside his native Sierra Leone.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST

Over the last year Ishmael’s story has taken him around Europe and around the world. Last week we were lucky enough to host him in London – Editor and Publicity Manager Robin Harvie invited him into the filing cupboard for a short reading, and asked him about his remarkable experiences.

A New Audio Catalogue for 4th Estate, HarperPress and Perennial books
Click on the jackets to hear the editor talk for a minutes about the book

Isn’t life more interesting when you can talk about it?

Every six months we create a catalogue of titles about to be published, aimed at the book trade. But this season, we thought we’d go straight to the source, and ask editors to give to readers a sneak preview of just some favourite titles they are currently working on for this coming Autumn.

reviewers: If you’d like a copy of our full catalogue in the paper edition, contact us at the usual email: editor@fifthestate.co.uk

Click on each jacket to hear the editor tell you the background to the book, and why we feel passionate about it.

FICTION

Click on image to hear about The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham (July, by 4th Estate)

Click on image to hear about Zoology by Ben Dolnick (August, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Maynard and Jennica by Rudy Delson (September, by 4th Estate)

NON-FICTION

Click on image to hear about A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (May, by 4th Estate)

Click on image to hear about Tea With Pinochet by Christina Lamb (July, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (September, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about 3 Para by Patrick Bishop (September, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about The British by Boris Johnson (September, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Finding Moonshine by Marcus du Sautoy (September, by 4th Estate)

Click on image to hear about The Book of Dad by Paul Barker (October, by 4th Estate)

Click on image to hear about Spitfire Women by Giles Whittell (September, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Arthur Conan Doyle by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (September, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about This Little Britain by Harry Bingham (October, by 4th Estate)

Click on image to hear about No Way Home by Carlos Acosta (October, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Nemesis by Max Hastings (October, by HarperPress)

Click on image to hear about Geekspeak by Graham Tattersall (October, by 4th Estate)

NOW IN PAPERBACK

Click on image to hear about Sand in My Shoes by Joan Rice (July, by Perennial)

Click on image to hear about The Discomfort Zone by Jonanthan Franzen (October, by Perennial)

Ishmael Beah, whom I’ve blogged about before and received lots of emails about as a result, was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Please click on the link to watch him in interview for five minutes — he is brilliant.

Please feel free to use or send (visit here to get the embed code).

‘I have rarely read a book that makes my heart hurt, but this one does…It’s the most moving and remarkable story I’ve ever read’ Jon Stewart.

Sebastian Junger: The arming of children is one of the greatest evils of the modern world, and yet we know so little about it because the children themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage.

Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. “A Long Way Gone” is one of the most important war stories of our generation. We ignore its message at our peril.

Hilary Mantel: A corrosive, eloquent and illuminating account of a child soldier’s life, and it makes you look at the news with a fresh eye. And ask questions about the responsibility and involvement of other countries in these dire situations.

I think it was very brave of Ishmael Beah to set down an account of his life, when what he most needed, he must have felt, was a chance to forget…

You cannot read this account and think of the author as alien, even when he is acting out what seems to be murderous mania, and what he has done is to make his situation imaginable for us, and stop us from simply turning away in horror. That is the best gift he could give the world.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have often struggled to imagine their lives.

In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated there are now some 300,000 child soldiers.

A few months ago 4th Estate’s Editorial Director, Mitzi Angel, signed up the memoir of Ishmael Beah. She tells me that at the age of twelve, Beah fled attacking rebels in Sierra Leone and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army when, for a number of circumstantial reasons, he found he was capable of ‘truly terrible acts’. Beah came to the United States when he was seventeen, and graduated from Oberlin College in 2003. He now lives in New York City and has addressed the UN on several occasions.

What must surely strike anyone who hears Baeh speak or reads his text is the humanity of someone who was once capable of commiting acts we’d quickly label ‘inhuman’.

Five years ago, after reading a tranche of books on Nazi Germany, I searched quite hard for a book that didn’t treat the landmark events of the 20th century as narrative history so much as analysis into the pyschological make-up and circumstances that create mankind’s often-catastrophic story. An answer to the ‘Why’ as much as the ‘What’ and ‘When’, if you like.

The closest I found at that time was a profoundly well-written and necessary book, Humanity by Jonathan Glover (Pimlico), which is still in print. You can read the first chapter of that book here, care of the New York Times.

Meanwhile, I think Ishmael Baeh’s book, A Long Way Gone, promises to be a different but equally valid attempt at such an answer, told from a literary and personal perspective. We’ll publish in May 2007.