Product Description

A cathartic denunciation of poverty, ignorance, global apathy and media blindness, this title is both a poignant love story and a stirring hymn to humanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66735 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
Courtemanche is a French-Canadian journalist and film-maker specialising in Third-World politics and the impact of AIDS upon Africa. Set in Rwanda in 1994, his novel is an attempt to portray and come to terms with both the terrible social fault-lines which led to the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus - and with the plague-like spread of a disease, AIDS, which recognizes no social or political boundaries. Courte-manche's main protagonist is a white documentary film-maker who falls in love with a young Tutsi woman. This relationship becomes the vehicle for the author's impressive intertwining of the personal and the political. It's a nightmarish, uncompromising and disturbing read, underpinned by an imperative to tell things as they were (and are), however hideous, but also to seek for some redeeming human quality. A very powerful debut, ably translated from the French by Patricia Claxton.

Jonathan Kaplan, author of The Dressing Station
"Do not expect it to leave you untouched."

New Internationalist
"A moving and brave meditation on love and evil as well as a scathing indictment."

Customer Reviews

Genocide seen from within
I read many books on the genocide in Rwanda, and I lived in Rwanda itself for a year, and yet reading this book I have the impression that I understood many important things for the first time.
What I appreciated in this book is the fact that, although the character is a Canadian, what he does most of the time is to report Rwandan people's point of view on the dynamics of the genocide. Instead of trying to mediate and explain in Western terms this phenomenon, which is what has been done by too many authors writing on the genocide, the author gives us the words of Rwandans, justly represented as both victims and authors.
Many times, scholars and writers have tried to represent the Rwandan genocide as if it had happened in a context similar to a Western one, thus making Rwandan people think and talk like Western people. In this way, the Western reader could sympathize with the victims, despise the perpetrators, and understand absolutely nothing on how such things could happen. In this book, instead, no easy readings are given of the genocide, nor can we always relate to the behaviour of victims and perpetrators, and yet I have the impression that this is an incredibly honest book, and a book which helps to understand, if one can ever understand a genocide.

Amazing
It took me a while to get into this book as I worried I wasn't going to be able to remember who was who and therefore follow the story properly. I needn't have worried. The book is so beautifully written and translated which makes what you're reading about all the more horrific as the atrocities are reported in such a matter of fact manner. I feel the true story of the genocide is told (it's a novel but based on fact with real characters) but not in a sensationalist or judgemental way. You are appalled at some aspects of humanity then moved to tears by others - the kindness, love, generosity, loyalty and love of life in the face of imminent death really does make you realise how lucky you are. Everyone should read this book if only to understand the African people all the more and to remember the appalling genocide and its innocent victims.

interesting but brutal
This story takes place in Kigali (Rwanda) at the start of the civil war (for want of a better phrase). It is told from the viewpoint of Valcourt, a Canadian journalist who has made many local friends there. He has fallen in love with the country, and with a young woman, Gentille. He describes the events leading up to the massacre of the Tutsis from a personal point of view. In the introduction the author states that it is a lightly fictionalised story, and that most of the names and incidents described really did happen.

Despite of this is not a history book, and so it doesn't detail the events you saw on the news in a logical fashion. This book is all about human emotions: love, friendship, anger, hatred, apathy. This makes it an incredibly powerful book to read: it is one of the few books that has actually made me cry.

I would recommend this book to anybody, whether they have a particular knowledge of Rwanda or not. The story really makes you think about people and what they are capable of, both in a positive and a negative sense. Just don't read it on public transport (as I did) as people tend to look at you rather oddly!