Uzodinma Iweala is an important new voice in African fiction. Set in an unnamed West African state riven by civil war, Beasts of No Nation is the powerful debut novel from this prizewinning Harvard graduate and Mellon Mays Scholar. Young Agu is asleep in a one-room shack when he hears them breaking through the door. Dragged into the muddy, rain-soaked road, he lies prone before a shabby band of guerilla soldiers. Their leader, the imposing Commandant, will decide Agu's fate.