Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1990408 in Books
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Customer Reviews

The horror of genocide told through the eyes of doomed lovers
The pool in the title is that of a large hotel in Kigali. The two main characters, Valcourt, who is an ex-pat Canadian in Rwanda to make a film that clearly will never be made and Gentille, a waitress at the hotel who is a Hutu but looks like a Tutsi live at the hotel. They fall in love and the horror of the Rwandan genocide is told through their eyes. Just enough historical background is given to enable us to follow the events. Detail is not needed for horror has a greater impact when it comes upon us suddenly and without explanation.

The Rwandan version of `the final solution', bureaucratic sloth and blindness and the effects of AIDS on individuals and the country are mixed up in a complex and harrowing story. The author makes it clear that he is describing real events and even using real names. He does not need to moralize; events speak for themselves. Constantine, a minor character, has AIDS but is determined to copulate with as many women as possible without protection. His rationale is that since they are all going to die anyway, they may as well enjoy life in the meantime. Work out your own morality.

The underlying moral dilemma for Valcourt is whether he should take Gentille to Canada along with the dead Constantine's baby whom they have adopted. He decides not to do so since he has committed himself to Rwanda. A price has to be paid for this decision. The size of this price is described in horrifying detail and the reader will have to decide whether this price was worth paying.

This book cannot be judged like any other novel because the events described are supposed to be based on fact. Had they not been we could justifiably accuse the author of being unrealistic in his horror. The writing is of a high standard and economical without being terse. A young, naïve, diplomat is shown around the hopelessly ill-supplied hospital because his boss is playing golf. This tells us all we need to know about the dead hand of bureaucracy and its inability to meet real need.

The sensibilities of `civilized' westerners are not spared in the descriptions of consequences of lack of intervention in Rwanda in or before 1994. It does not make for comfortable reading and there is no happy ending. Highly recommended.

Devastating but entirely necessary
It seems the curse of Africa that it is subject to old Testament like suffering. Famine, AIDS and genocide. What is wrong? Is it the cursed continent? However it is the spirit of its people, the endless beautiful horizons and the kindness of neighbour to neighbour that make Africa an example to the rest of the world. This book brings this all too light. The brutality of the genocide and the friendship of people wakes up a sleeping man and allows him to fall in love and live a life that would otherwise have been full of every day nothingness.

This book is beautifully written. Despite the sadness and horror it reads like poetry and is marked by hope. When faced with a situation that is out of control we can live and die menaingful lives. Really worth the read.

Love in the holocaust
The astonishingly poetic book explores such apparently un-poetic issues as the African AIDS apidemic, genocide, poverty, corruption and great power cynicism. But this is the background or rather the essential context of a central love affair that is portrayed in an earthy yet transcendental way. A love for Rwanda, a country of hills, and of Africa, is what I brought away from this tragic yet ultimately optimistic book. I knew little or nothing of Rwanda and these events before I read the book. But it combines journalistic and historic insight with a heightened emotional instensity that sweep the reader along. I would recommend it to any reader who wants to have their eyes opened to the darker side of the late twentieth century in such majestic style.