Uzodinma Iweala is the author of Beasts of No Nation , which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2007 he was selected as one of Granta 's Best Young American Novelists. A graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he lives in New York City and Abuja, Nigeria.