“Hideously effective in conveying the essential horror of his experiences,” (Kirkus Reviews), former child soldier Ishmael Beah escaped his native Sierra Leone at 17. He detailed his brutal early years and his struggle to return to civilized society in his international bestseller, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, required reading “to learn about the world and what it means to be human” (Washington Post).  Beah’s other writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, LIT, and numerous academic journals. He has spoken before the United Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations on the effects of war on children, and is also a UNICEF ambassador and advocate. Radiance of Tomorrow, his first novel, explores the depredations, upheavals, and tenacious hope experienced by two friends in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s civil war.