Maret Kapp

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007

If I find a book truly remarkable, I like to devour it rapidly in great big, greedy mouthfuls. Although Beah's book about his early childhood in Sierra Leone was riveting, I found I could only take small doses of his hellish and violent past.

The author's tale begins when he was 12 years old, a happy go-lucky child with a burgeoning interest in trendy clothes and rap music. Forced unexpectedly to flee from attacking rebel forces, Ishmael and his friends roamed aimlessly through forests and managed to survive by their wits and the grace of God before being captured by the military. Given drugs and AK-47s, the boys were trained to become soldiers and spent the next three years as merciless killing machines for the government army.

At 15, Ishmael was chosen for rehabilitation and reinstatement into a normal life, a formidable and almost impossible task. An important turning point in his life was his participation at a UN conference on children affected by war where he met his future adoptive mother, Laura Simms.

Although Ishmael's personal story ends on a positive note, one cannot help but reflect on the tragic lives of those children in Sierra Leone who were not as lucky. This book will stay with you for a very long time and remind you that complaining about the temperature of your latte or traffic gridlock is just plain ludicrous when you consider what is going on in the rest of the troubled world.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

New York: Free Press, 2007

In her memorable biography, Infidel, author Ayaan Hirsi Ali takes a hard look at her life as a Muslim woman. Born into a devout, traditional home in Somalia, she underwent a difficult upbringing that was marked by beatings, female excision, and civil war.

Eventually, she made her way to the Netherlands where she had the opportunity to experience the joys of freedom and self-determination. Here she pursued a university degree and a career in federal politics with a goal to improving the lot of immigrants and Muslim women in particular. She was thrown into the global limelight with the making of her film, Submission and the murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh and has since been named one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2005 by Time magazine.

Witnessing Ali's development from submissive girl to independent adult as well as her evolution from a committed supporter of Islam to a skeptical non-believer makes for truly fascinating reading. Given today's interest in the Muslim religion, this work is certainly a must-read.

Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander

New York: Riverhead Books, 2007

Raised as an Orthodox Jew, Shalom Auslander has written a somewhat unorthodox autobiography of growing up in a faith he found restrictive and unforgiving.

Too frightened not to believe in the Almighty and too defiant to bend to religious tenets, Auslander spent much of his childhood and youth in a daily struggle with God. Experimentation with non-kosher foods, pornography, and drugs eventually gave way to more serious acts of disobedience that included theft. Adding to the miseries of his young life are the dysfunctional members of his family: a brutish father, a penny-pinching mother, and a rebellious brother.

Through marriage and the birth of a son, the author seems to be able to create an uneasy cessation of hostilities with God and find some measure of contentment. What prevents this memoir from becoming just a morass of painful memories is Auslander's unholy sense of humour, which is the book's saving grace.

Spy's Wife: The Moscow Memoirs of A Canadian Who Witnessed the End of the Cold War by Janice Cowan

Toronto: James Lorimer, 2006

After elaborate James Bond-type of training, Janice Cowan, a Canadian journalist, was sent along with her husband, Sam, to carry out espionage missions in Russia and neighbouring Soviet countries in the early nineties. What she pictured was a life of intrigue straight out of a Hollywood thriller. What she did not expect was the disintegration of the Communist juggernaut that had been the Soviet Union.

Her first-hand account of the riots, changes and hardships that took place in this area of the world is as spellbinding as any Ian Fleming novel. Her personal photos serve to remind us, however, that we are reading recent history and not fiction. Hard to put down, this book will demand that you put aside all other tasks so that you can read it in an afternoon.