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Continuing efforts by the Australian newspaper to discredit former boy soldier Ishmael Beah appear to have fallen flat, with customers continuing to purchase his memoir, A Long Way Gone (HarperCollins).

While acknowledging that Beah ‘clearly went through a terrible ordeal' during Sierra Leone's Civil War, the newspaper has alleged that he was 15, not 13, when forced to take up arms, and fought for months, rather than years.

‘To tell you the truth we've not had any comment at all from anyone,' said Christine Farmer of the book's local publisher, HarperCollins. ‘Needless to say there have been no changes to the sales patterns!'

Fiona Stager, the president of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) and owner of Brisbane's Avid Reader,  also reported a muted reaction. ‘I haven't had any [ABA] member contact about it,' she told WBN.

The few customers that have mentioned the story, she says, describe it as a ‘media beat-up'. ‘They're more interested in the issue of child soldiers than the particular details (of Beah's life).'

Now 27 and working as a UNICEF advocate  in New York, Beah stands by his story. ‘I don't worry about (the articles). For me, my story is accurate and I presented it accurately and I stand by it. I'm not worried about it,' he wrote in a statement posted on his website. 

Beah's US publisher, Sarah Crichton of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, says that she has ‘met many people who knew Mr Beah in Sierra Leone, and who have corroborated his story.'

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker