Beasts of No Nation is a 2005 novel by the Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala, that takes its title from Fela Kuti's 1989 album of the same name. The book won the 2005 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. It was adapted as a movie in 2015.
First edition
Uzodinma Iweala is a Nigerian-American author and medical doctor. His debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, is a formation of his thesis work at Harvard. It depicts a child soldier in an unnamed African country. The book, published in 2005 and adapted as an award-winning film in 2015, was mentioned by Time Magazine, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Times, and Rolling Stone. In 2012, he released the non-fiction book Our Kind of People, about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nigeria. He later released a novel titled Speak No Evil, published in 2018, which highlights the life of a gay Nigerian-American boy named Niru.
Uzodinma Iweala during a public reading at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 17, 2008.