Ishmael Beah Joins MashableReads Social Book Club

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Ishmael Beah from Sierra Leone, author of the book 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier' chats to his fans during a book signing at Brunel University in west London, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008.

Image: Sang Tan/Associated Press/Associated Press

By Elisha Hartwig2014-01-31 19:19:09 UTC

Our second selection this year for the MashableReads social book club is Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow .

Ishmael Beah, author of the bestselling memoir A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, makes his fiction debut in The Radiance of Tomorrow. After civil war in Sierra Leone, two friends attempt to protect and provide for their families in the shadow of violence, corruption and devastating industrial development. Written in prose that resonates with the rich oral tradition of generations, Radiance of Tomorrow is a devastating and hopeful exploration of a society learning to heal.

Be sure to follow @mashlifestyle to discuss Radiance of Tomorrow, using the hashtag #MashReads throughout the month. You can also join our Facebook group to stay updated on MashableReads, and let us know what you think of the book.

SEE ALSO: 8 Book Recommendations From MashableReads

Want to hang out with the author in person? Share your thoughts on the book using the hashtag #MashReads via Vine video, Instagram or Twitter prior to the chat, and we will select 10 people to visit Mashable's New York headquarters to meet Ishmael Beah and participate in our book club on Feb. 25.

Also, for the first time, we've created some discussion questions and a suggested reading guide to keep you on track throughout the month. We encourage you to grab some friends and get together to discuss Radiance of Tomorrow some time in the month of Februrary.

Below, we spoke with Beah about the art of translation, his advice for aspiring writers and his secret geek confessions.

Mashable : You draw from your mother tongue, Mende, to create certain expressions in English. How do you go about adapting those phrases?

Beah: I think about how things are said in Mende, my mother tongue, and then will try and find the translation. Sometimes the translation is easier to come by, and other times I either have to find the English equivalent or use words in ways that will create images that will bring to life the mood of the expression at hand. For example, to talk about the age of a character you describe his or her attributes. In Mende, one of the ways to show age during the telling of a story is to talk about the hair of the elder: “His or her hair is the color of stagnant clouds.” In other cases, it is a bit more challenging especially when sounds are used to illustrate time, place and mood and to personify nature.

Also, I imagine telling the story orally. The oral tradition of my childhood was my first introduction to the narrative form. When you share a story orally, you have to capture the imagination of the listeners and bring them to the landscape of the story so that they can feel, smell, hear and be a part of it as intimately as possible. You have to use images and words that will leave prints on the mind of your listener. And this is possible through a careful usage of language, of parables, adages, of personifying even nature to color whatever is unfolding in the narrative. So when I write, I utilize some of these elements using the beauty of my languages and their various expressions that sparks the imagination."

What was your experience writing fiction after writing your memoir?

I have written fiction before; short stories mostly. However, this was the first time that I embarked on writing a novel. I wanted to discuss a much neglected but very important question about what happens after war. Why and how do people return home, the struggles of trying to return to the country and people they had been, to repair their traditions and find the simplicity that once defined them. There was one commonality in writing a novel and a memoir and that was the quest of finding the English equivalent of the many languages spoken in Sierra Leone. Both works were set in places with remarkable richness in language, gestures, sounds that were difficult to describe using the medium of English. I do like the challenge though and came out satisfied each time.

With the memoir, there were restrictions with the rendering of the timeline but the beauty and reward was discovering that the experience had its own natural structure. It was also very personal and hence difficult emotionally to return to what had happened and relive it so as to bring it to life for the readers. On the other hand, with fiction, there was more freedom to play with language, timeline and explore the imagination while looking at the many truths of all the characters involved. I could distance myself from things. I find joy in writing so for me it doesn’t really matter whether it is fiction or nonfiction. The discovery of language intrigues me every time.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Read a lot, as this is the only way you will find your own voice. Also, sit and write as much as you can. Just don’t think about ideas in your head. They aren’t worth a thing if you don’t write them down and refine them.

There is no central protagonist in Radiance of Tomorrow. Instead, the focal characters shift as the novel progresses. Did you relate to any characters more strongly than others?

All the characters in the novel are very complex in the sense that they are dealing with the past while trying to grab onto something in the future, while living in a present that is fragile and difficult. Some are young but with experiences that had provided them knowledge beyond their years. There is a tug of war between the old ways and something new that no one really has a strong grasp of. Thus, each character is a central protagonist to the truth of where things are in the novel

Yes, I related to one character more than the others, and that character was Mama Kadie, the elder woman who opens the story. I imagined her to be my grandmother and got into her mind about what it means to preserve one's traditions especially after so many aspects of that tradition were shattered.

Do you have any secret geek confessions?

I have been thinking about developing a technology that will pluck someone out of bed, home or anywhere they choose and put them directly in the seat of a flying airplane! I think this will be especially great for authors on book tours.

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Topics: book club, books, ishmael beah, Lifestyle, mashablereads, Travel & Leisure, Work & Play