Beah's memoir to be examined by dons reports The Weekend Australian

INVESTIGATIONS by The Australian into the authenticity of Ishmael Beah's acclaimed best-selling memoir A Long Way Gone will be discussed by a panel of academics at a reading festival in Portland, Oregon this week.

The book, purportedly the real story of Beah's time as a drug-addicted child soldier in Sierra Leone in the mid-1990s, is the subject of international scepticism after The Australian exposed errors that cast doubt on its veracity as a work of non-fiction.
Portland's Multnomah County Library has chosen A Long Way Gone for the city's annual Everybody Reads festival, which aims to get people in the community reading and connecting with each other around a single book.
Earlier this month, Beah, 28, said he was "thrilled and deeply moved" after his book was selected.

Portland State University literature professor and noted poet Primus St John said the authenticity issue would be part of two roundtable discussions of the book by local scholars.
"There's going to be a discussion of memoir, and oneof the things that people say about memoir is that it's written from memory and memory has inaccuracies," Professor St John said.
"Now it's one thing to say, 'OK, there can be inaccuracies', but The Australian is saying that there's a lot of information suggesting more than just inaccuracy of memory, that we seem to have a larger element of deception. That's something we need to discuss."

Professor St John said he would conduct his own research prior to the discussions.
The Australian's investigations have established that key events portrayed in A Long Way Gone did not occur and that crucial dates don't stack up.
Beah continues to defend his book as truthful and has been backed by publisher-editor Sarah Crichton.
A Long Way Gone has sold more than 650,000 hardback copies and has made Beah a millionaire. The book is due forpaperback release in the US in August.