A Long Way Gone
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free A Long Way Gone trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A Long Way Gone is Ishmael Beah's account of being a boy in Sierra Leone when civil war reached his village. At twelve he was running from rebels, at thirteen he was carrying a rifle, and by sixteen he was learning how to live as a civilian again. It is one of the most widely taught books about children and war, and readers tend to remember its small details as sharply as its battles: a cassette of rap songs, a grandmother's sayings, a story told around a fire. This quiz follows the book in order. It starts with the boys who leave home for a weekend and never get back, moves through the months of wandering, the recruitment and the years of fighting, and ends with rehabilitation, a foster family and the escape abroad. A handful of questions step outside the story to cover the war itself, the book's reception and what its author did next. It suits students revising the book for class, book clubs that have just finished it, and anyone who read it years ago and wants to see how much stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In A Long Way Gone, what are Ishmael and his brother travelling to when rebels attack their home village?
A talent show
A talent show in a nearby town was the draw. The boys planned to perform rap songs and told no one they were leaving, because they expected to be home the next day.
Q 02The drug 'brown brown', which Ishmael Beah's unit sniffed in A Long Way Gone, mixes cocaine with what?
Gunpowder
Gunpowder was the extra ingredient. Beah blames the addictions and the brainwashing for the violence he carried out as a boy.
Q 03The opening scene of A Long Way Gone finds Ishmael Beah at high school in 1998 in which city?
New York
New York is where the book opens. Curious classmates ask him about the war, and he smiles and tells them almost nothing.
Q 04A village chief who finds rap cassettes on the captured Ishmael Beah orders him to do what?
Dance
Dance was the test, and it worked: the chief decided the boys were lost children fleeing the war, not rebels, and released them instead of drowning them.
Q 05In A Long Way Gone, a strange roaring that frightens the seven wandering boys turns out to be what?
The ocean
The ocean was making the noise. Beah had never stood on the shore of one so vast, and the sight calmed the boys enough to play soccer on the sand.
Q 06Workers from which organisation arrive by truck and take Ishmael Beah away from the fighting?
UNICEF
UNICEF staff left with fifteen boys that day. Beah felt betrayed by the commander who handed him over to civilians, and hid a weapon in his clothes.
Q 07Which film hero's moves do Ishmael Beah and his friend Alhaji copy on raids in A Long Way Gone?
Rambo
Rambo was the model. The boys watched war films between raids, and one village attack earned Alhaji the nickname Little Rambo.
Q 08In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah's grandmother explains a saying that people should strive to be like what?
The moon
The moon, she tells him, never draws the complaints the sun gets when it shines too hard. At six he would lie on the ground at night picking out shapes in it.
Q 09What do fishermen take from Ishmael Beah's group in A Long Way Gone, leaving the boys to cross scorching ground?
Their shoes
Their shoes were taken as a punishment. A lone fisherman then treated the boys' blistered feet for days and refused to tell them his name.
Q 10Which nurse at the rehabilitation centre in A Long Way Gone patiently wins Ishmael Beah's trust?
Esther
Esther made him earn her trust instead of demanding his. He came to see her as a sister, but never saw her again after he left the city.
Q 11To which West African capital is Ishmael Beah driven for rehabilitation in A Long Way Gone?
Freetown
Freetown astonished him. He and Alhaji had never seen the city before, and they later slipped out of the centre to explore it on their own.
Q 12What is the name of Ishmael Beah's older brother, last seen fleeing a rebel attack on Kamator?
Junior
Junior, older by a year, vanished in the chaos at Kamator. A woman later told Beah that his brother had passed through her village looking for him.
Q 13Which Shakespeare play is Lieutenant Jabati reading when he first talks with Ishmael Beah?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar is the play the lieutenant likes to quote. Beah later recites a monologue from it for foreign visitors at the rehabilitation centre.
Q 21The Walkman a nurse gives Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone comes with a cassette by which rap group?
Run-D.M.C.
Run-D.M.C. was on the tape. The nurse kept the player in her office so that no other boy could take it, and told him to come and listen whenever he liked.
Q 22In A Long Way Gone, a cassette by which reggae star is bought for Ishmael Beah on a trip into the city?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley's Exodus album was a gift from a field worker on that trip. Beah had grown up on reggae, and the nurse used his old love of music to draw him out.
Q 23Before which world body does the teenage Ishmael Beah speak about child soldiers in 1996 in A Long Way Gone?
The United Nations
Q 14Which weapon is the trembling Ishmael Beah handed on the day he is made a recruit in A Long Way Gone?
An AK-47
An AK-47 was his first weapon, and he shook the whole time he held it. By the next day he was being taught to fire, reload and clean it.
Q 15On what does Corporal Gadafi make Ishmael Beah and the other recruits practise stabbing in A Long Way Gone?
A banana tree
A banana tree stood in for the enemy. The boys stabbed feebly until the corporal told them to picture the rebels who had killed their parents.
Q 16Which bird falls from the sky and is eaten by Ishmael Beah's starving friends in A Long Way Gone?
A crow
A crow dropped out of the sky, and the hungry boys cooked it despite their misgivings. Two nights later Saidu, one of the seven, died in his sleep.
Q 17Lost alone in the forest for a month, Ishmael Beah climbs a tree to escape which animals in A Long Way Gone?
Wild pigs
Wild pigs charged the tree until night fell. It recalled his grandmother's tale of a hunter who used magic to become a boar and lure the herd to its death.
Q 18In which town are Ishmael Beah and his friends due to perform a rap routine when A Long Way Gone begins?
Mattru Jong
Mattru Jong lay sixteen miles from home. The boys were still there when friends came back early from school with news that their own village had been attacked.
Q 19Ordered to hand in his weapons before leaving the front, Ishmael Beah secretly keeps a bayonet and what else?
A grenade
A grenade stayed hidden in his clothes. By his account he threw it during a brawl with former rebel boys at the first compound, though its delayed blast did little harm.
Q 20Which nickname does Lieutenant Jabati give Ishmael Beah for seeming harmless yet proving deadly?
Green Snake
Green Snake was the lieutenant's name for a boy who did not look dangerous but could be deadly when he chose. It came after a raid Beah led as head of a small squad.
The United Nations heard him on the last day of a children's conference. He dropped the speech that had been written for him and spoke from the heart instead.
Q 24Arriving in America in A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah learns which new word for something he has never seen?
Snow
Snow was new to him, and so was the bitter cold. He had brought only light clothes, so a workshop leader had to find winter jackets for him and his travelling companion.
Q 25Which American storyteller, met at a 1996 conference, later becomes Ishmael Beah's foster mother?
Laura Simms
Laura Simms ran a workshop that helped the children tell their stories. She gave him her phone number, and he called her collect when war reached the capital.
Q 26What is the trade of Uncle Tommy, who takes Ishmael Beah into his family in A Long Way Gone?
A carpenter
A carpenter with a houseful of children, Uncle Tommy had never met his nephew. He visited every weekend and took the boy on long walks until he was ready to move in.
Q 27Into which neighbouring country does Ishmael Beah escape at the end of A Long Way Gone?
Guinea
Guinea was his way out. He spent most of his savings on bribes at checkpoints, then sheltered among refugees at his home country's embassy there.
Q 28Just across the border at the end of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah finds he cannot speak which language?
French
French is the country's colonial language, and he did not speak it. He searched until he found someone who spoke a language he knew and could help him find a bus.
Q 29A Long Way Gone closes with a folk tale in which a hunter is handed an impossible choice by which animal?
A monkey
A monkey warns the hunter that one of his parents will die whether he shoots or not. As a child Beah decided he would shoot, to spare other hunters the same trap.
Q 30During the 1997 fighting in A Long Way Gone, what finally kills Ishmael Beah's Uncle Tommy?
An illness
An illness killed him. He ran a fever while the fighting kept doctors out of reach, and the family buried him the next morning.