This is an extremely comprehensive and approachable history, documentation, and aftermath of the genocide in Africa, specifically in Rwanda.

The author employs a very engaging tactic through his notes from interviews with both key political figures and everyday citizens. Hearing first-hand accounts from those at the heart of the matter is highly impactful.

Moreover, the author doesn't shy away from presenting all sides of the situation, holding everyone accountable. Although there is a slight bias in favor of General (now President) Kagame, he is such an enigmatic and rational figure that it would be challenging for anyone to remain completely objective. I would be very intrigued to read a follow-up by the author 10 years after this initial account.

What struck me the most was the author's ability, as a journalist, to make numerous visits and have them all count. How inaccessible these stories would have been if Gourevitch hadn't been able to secure appointments with political figures. One can't imagine a journalist simply walking up to the White House and visiting the President. It seems much more feasible with the Presidents of Uganda, Rwanda, and the former President of "Zaire."

This is truly a great read that not only explains the events that took place but also offers the reader an opportunity to delve deeper into another world within our own.

Personal Stuff:

Here's a funny story. When I picked up this book in the bookstore, it was because the title caught my attention. I put it back down, thinking I couldn't possibly learn enough about Rwanda through one book of "stories," and I didn't want to turn it into a new history project. (As Gourevitch repeatedly points out, it's difficult to get the true story of a genocide.) After walking around the store some more, I went back and picked it up again. I couldn't quite get it out of my mind, but I also couldn't convince myself to buy it. After much deliberation, I finally decided to just buy the darn thing because it was high time I learned the details of what happened (and unfortunately, what is still happening to some extent) in Rwanda and Central Africa with the massacres.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom was upset about Clinton "giving money to a country [she:] couldn't even pronounce" when there were enough problems in America. I used to think the same way without knowing the story, but after learning about the severity of the situation and how little of the aid was properly allocated, I'm inclined to agree, if only because to empower a people to break the cycle of violence, it must come from within. If any of the many international supporters, any country at all, had taken a bit of responsibility or accountability for where it was spending funds and bothered to do some research with, say, a certain journalist or someone who had been there for more than a day, the extended trauma of the true refugees might well have been avoided.

NON VI DIMENTICHEREMO

This is not just an African story. It's not just a struggle between the Hutu and the Tutsi. It's a story that concerns all of humanity. Because there are no human beings who are "more human" than others.

In the smallest country in Africa, Rwanda, in a territory just a little larger than Sicily, in a landscape that sometimes recalls the Langhe and sometimes Switzerland, between April 6 and mid-July 1994, the most残酷 and rapid genocide in human history took place. It is estimated that in about one hundred days, one million Rwandans were killed, mostly Tutsi (the current estimate has approached one million two hundred thousand deaths, of which 80% were Tutsi). The assassins were extremely efficient and managed to kill more than ten thousand people in a single day (four hundred deaths per hour, one every nine seconds).

To this day, mass graves continue to be discovered in Rwanda.

At Murambi, a memorial of the genocide, a secondary technical school was being built. The local bishop pushed the Tutsi population to take refuge in this place because of the supposed protection of the French troops. The death toll reached 65,000. Now the buildings intended for the school have been transformed into a genocide memorial.

Ten years after the events, I wanted to be present at the genocide commemorations, not only to document the official and unofficial ceremonies, both funerary and otherwise, but also to see how the country is doing. Especially to see how the people are, how they have reacted to the horror, and how they live or survive.

“Ntituzabibagirwa” is written on the crosses of the graves at Murambi, in the southwest of the country, where at least sixty thousand people were massacred, including children and the elderly, women and men. For me, it will be impossible to forget. I hope I'm not the only one.

Philip Gourevitch is a journalist with prestigious collaborations under his belt, including five years at the helm of the Paris Review. This book is the result of nine trips to Rwanda and the neighboring countries over the course of two years. It has won several awards. Ten years later, Gourevitch also dealt with Abu Ghraib.

If I can point out one and only one defect in this splendid and devastating account, it is the lack of notes, as is the custom in the United States. They do it to facilitate reading, but I felt the lack. For the rest, what can I say? The title alone is a punch in the stomach, like the rest. Probably the most beautiful book ever written about the Rwandan genocide. If beautiful is a word that can be associated with that horror.

Murambi, memorial of the Genocide.

A staggering work that is written in a manner that is difficult to stomach, yet remarkably easy to digest. It devotes a significant amount of time to sharing the contemporary accounts of survivors. However, it also spends nearly an equal amount of time sharing the accounts of the surviving perpetrators of the genocide. In this way, it effectively showcases the various ways in which people have coped with both the trauma and the guilt, as well as the excuses that the latter often rely on.

Nonetheless, I did not consider it gratuitous. In fact, the book perhaps dedicates most of its time to providing valuable history and context. It then utilizes this to speculate on the future of Rwanda and its people. The only aspect that I can truly complain about is that the later chapters seemed to be a bit drawn out, and the author appeared to repeatedly delve into the politics of the surrounding states. While all this information is valuable, at a certain point, I felt that I was receiving a bit more than I had anticipated.

Still, this was an excellent and enlightening book on the subject. I highly commend the author for the measured tone he adopted, rather than overly relying on the dramatic for an easy hook.

I picked up this book primarily because of its high ratings. Additionally, I had a genuine interest in the Rwandan massacre and the reasons behind its occurrence. I anticipated that it would offer me valuable historical, sociological, and psychological perspectives, along with some engaging human stories.

To some extent, it did fulfill my expectations regarding the historical background. It detailed how colonial forces fabricated non-existent racial distinctions and elevated one "race" above the other. It also described how various colonial powers intervened, pitting one side against the other and passively observing as black man killed black man. Moreover, it mentioned how the UN remained inactive during the massacre. The book also presented numerous stories about different kinds of people, including the despicable, the ordinary, and the heroic.

However, I felt that all of this could have been conveyed in approximately one-third of the book's pages. The author tended to ramble on, speaking through the voices of his interviewees, which soon made me feel drowsy. I ended up leaving the book at around 70% read and simply skimmed through the rest.

In conclusion, whatever information this rather boring book provides about Rwanda can easily be obtained from Wikipedia. I'm not even motivated enough to write a proper review.

Vas problem uz riesenie ma. Musite zomriet.

In 1994, the Rwandan government called on its citizens, the Hutus, to kill their fellow citizens, the Tutsis. An armada brought machetes to the citizens on trucks, and they took on the task of carrying out genocide. Some, in order to save themselves from the attack of the machetes from the enraged bloodthirsty crowd, did so with excitement and brutality that the Blackshirts of the Nazi SS would not have been ashamed of. The book details what preceded the Rwandan genocide, how it happened, and how Central Africa developed after these events.

The Rwandan genocide and the rise of Nazi Germany have several common features. The first feature is the unbearable and long-lasting poverty of a sufficiently large number of inhabitants. In Germany, it could be the great economic crisis combined with the crazy economic measures of the then head of the German Bundesbank. Poverty in Rwanda was mainly associated with the large and long-term decline in the price of coffee on the world markets in the 1980s. People do not understand such externalities and only perceive that they work as hard as before, but suddenly, despite their hard work, they are poor. This is injustice, and someone must be responsible for it, right? The media happily identify the culprit with their vile propaganda, which is the second step in the recipe for genocide. While the Nazis had Julius Streicher and his disgusting tabloid Der Sturmer, the Rwandan genocidaires were served by Hassan Ngeze with his weekly Kangura and radio broadcasts on RTLM. The third common feature is the indoctrination of the population from an early age in semi-militant youth organizations. Yes, Rwanda also had its "Hitlerjugend".

It was a great disappointment to find that the International Criminal Tribunal has been just a feeble game since its founding and the Nuremberg Trials. Those Rwandan genocidaires who had the misfortune to be arrested by the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations while fleeing abroad could look forward to the luxury of UN prisons (until the end of 2008, the prisoners were being transferred to Mali). In Rwanda, they would have faced a similar fate as the Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg Trials, the death penalty. Or they would have ended up in Rwandan prisons, which were already so overcrowded that four prisoners were piled up on one square meter, creating a literally putrid mass, which was perhaps an even worse punishment than death. In any case, the International Criminal Tribunal today already considers life imprisonment too harsh. So, for example, Hassan Ngeze, the Rwandan leader of vile propaganda sentenced to 35 years, was almost released in 2018, after serving two-thirds of his sentence! His release was apparently prevented by a wave of criticism from the Western media.

One of the few outstanding positive heroes in the book is Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of one of the most luxurious hotels, the Hotel des Mille Collines in the Rwandan capital, Kigali. Paul managed to save many lives during the genocide. Based on these events, the film Hotel Rwanda was made, which received 3 Oscar nominations. But even this story does not have a happy ending. After the events described in the book, Paul obtained Belgian citizenship and fled to Brussels, where he worked as a taxi driver. After some time, he went to live in the USA because he did not feel safe in Europe. In 2021, he was extradited back to Rwanda and in a fabricated trial was sentenced to 25 years, which in his age practically amounts to life imprisonment.

Another outstanding positive figure in the book is Paul Kagame, the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who liberated Rwanda from the Hutu regime, thus ending the massacres and saving many lives. After the genocide, Rwanda was in a very complex political situation. Many people were dissatisfied with the fact that they had to forgive the killers of their families and live with them in peace side by side, so real democracy could lead to further massacres. So, although Rwanda looks like a democratic state, it is actually a kind of "Putinist democracy". Kagame won his third presidential elections in 2017 with 99% of the votes. In the book, Kagame presents his truly moderate, rational, and pragmatic views on the functioning after the genocide, as well as his peaceful and modest nature. In reality, however, he seems to suffer from the Putinist syndrome. His political opponents end up in prisons or as victims of assassinations, and even interfering in the internal political relations of neighboring states is not foreign to Kagame.

The book is an eye-opener when looking at the United Nations and the USA. While the UN peacekeeping forces just passively watched the genocide, the USA even refused to recognize that it was a genocide because it would have implied certain obligations for them under international treaties. We are already somewhat used to the fact that the USA brings democracy only to countries that have rich oil fields. France's participation in the genocide was scandalous and inexcusable (Operation Turquoise). The UN's support for the genocidaires in the refugee camps and its inability to help with the repatriation of the refugees raises the question of whether such an organization still makes sense at all. The imposition of their flawed justice on the Rwandans by the International Criminal Tribunal only further deepens the distrust of ordinary Africans in the values of the Western world. As the classic would say: "That's not how you do it to a dog's mother!"

PS: Bill Clinton apologized to Rwanda on behalf of the USA on March 25, 1998. Emmanuel Macron apologized on behalf of France on May 27, 2021. When will the West start to act so that it does not have to apologize?

I give it a sad 5/5.

Informative...

The second part of this book is significantly better than the first. While the first part is interesting, it appears somewhat detached and meandering. It consists of a nice set of interviews, but for the most part, they seem to be after-the-fact interviews.

In contrast, the second part becomes more unified and emotional. It focuses more on the present situation, specifically on how Rwanda is 'coping' with the genocide (if indeed it can ever hope to do so). At times, I get the impression that the author is presenting a rather 'rosy' picture of Rwandan president Paul Kagame. However, he does make valid points in detailing how the international community has been insensitive to Rwanda, particularly regarding the refugees (or fugitives from justice) in camps that were receiving humanitarian aid from several UN organizations.

Gourevitch also highlights the hypocrisy of the UN providing aid while being unwilling to risk lives, such as to prevent a genocide of nearly 1 million people.

This book reminds me of the points raised by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. A genocide involves many participants, and they can be eager believers in the righteousness of their cause. A genocide is organized, with machetes ordered, lists made, and groups assembled. These points are effectively presented in Gourevitch's book.

For a more immediate 'feeling' of the Rwandan genocide, it is recommended to read Roméo Dallaire's heart-wrenching Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Dallaire and Paul Rusesabagina (represented in the movie "Hotel Rwanda") are interviewed in Philip Gourevitch's book.


Overall, this book provides a thought-provoking and detailed account of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, as well as a critique of the international community's response. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding this tragic event and its implications.

When I share with my friends how remarkable this book is, I often receive responses like, "I can't read that, it's too upsetting." These remarks come from my progressive, non-profit sector, CSA share-owning friends. And I understand their point. However, seriously, you should read this book regardless.

Not only is it crucial to understand the events that have occurred in this world during our time and before to shape the future, but also because Gourevitch explores certain aspects in this book that I haven't found discussed elsewhere.

For example, he writes about Rwanda's then-Vice President and now President Kagame: "Because he was not an ideologue, Kagame was often called a pragmatist. But that implies an indifference to principle and... he sought to make a principle of being rational." Oh, and you really have to read the rest of that paragraph on page 225. He states: "Against those who preferred violence to reason, Kagame was ready to fight." And he doesn't mean violent combat; he means taking a principled stance against those who want to embroil people in insanity rather than engaging with others in a reality-based and clear-headed manner. I mean, goodness. For some reason, reading this makes my heart race with excitement.

There's another part on page 259 that nearly makes me go crazy. It's about how those guilty of genocide attempted (and mostly succeeded) in redefining the conversation about the genocide to conceal their guilt. He says, "With the lines so drawn, the war about the genocide was truly a postmodern war: a battle between those who believed that because the realities we inhabit are constructs of our imaginations, they are all equally true or false, valid or invalid, just or unjust, and those who believed that constructs of reality can - in fact, must - be judged as right or wrong, good or bad." I practically leaped out of my seat when I read this because I have this pet, uhhh, hobby of railing against people who believe we all create our own realities and that there is no such thing as objective truth. Gourevitch shows us in this book how denying objective reality can be a matter of life or death or, at the very least, justice or injustice.

I have more to say about the book, like how I learned from it that the crazy person that crazy people on street corners across America distribute strange political tracts about, Lyndon LaRouche, spread the information that the Tutsis committed genocide against the Hutus, not the other way around, and they did it with the help of British royalty or something like that. Ahhh, you know, I always assumed that LaRouche guy was insane because his followers often have those crazy eyes, but thanks, this confirms it. And I have much more to discuss than that. A whole lot more. Hey, you should read the book, and then we can talk about it, okay? What do you say?

December 2009

I FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK.

Let me take a moment to bask in the sense of accomplishment. It truly took me an eternity to complete. At some point during the two years since I first attempted to read it, it transformed into a personal challenge for me to actually get through the thing.

Gourevitch's prose is incredibly emotionally impactful. It is never overly elaborate or burdensome, but always beautiful and well-crafted journalistic writing. Each story he tells serves to illustrate a point, and I never had the impression that he was sharing the story merely because it was a cool or manipulative one. He hardly needed to adorn the truth; genocide is so vast in its own right that it could be severely understated and still remain monstrous.

Since it took me such a long time to read this (I started it for the second time nearly six months ago), I would essentially have to reread the book to provide a more comprehensive review. I'm left with the disturbing and distressing thought that the West has truly messed up Africa, and this is something we've been aware of for over a hundred years. It's hard to read Joseph Conrad and not get that impression. And the West has continuously made one blunder after another, though "foot in mouth" is really too mild a term. It downplays the situation, but I'm not sure how else to put it.

The book also served as a reminder that genocide is a recurring and persistent feature of human history. We like to think of the Holocaust as the genocide that would end all genocides, but it definitely wasn't. The Holocaust gave us the language to analyze instances of genocide, but despite oaths of "never again," genocide continues to occur and is actively happening in Darfur. (Let's just say that I don't have a very high level of trust in the UN after finishing this book, among other reasons.) Given how adept humans are at prejudice, I doubt it's possible to eliminate genocide.

It's a really depressing book to read, but I'm glad I did.

November 2007: I have to admit that I didn't finish this book. When it was time for it to go back to the library, I just couldn't bring myself to renew it. It was too depressing and didn't quite fit in with the holiday season. However, what I did read of it was very well written and enjoyable for what it was - an analysis of a genocide.

This is not a book to be rushed through or devoured quickly, but one to be read slowly and contemplated upon.

There are numerous books accessible regarding the study of genocide and specifically about the genocide in Rwanda. I have perused several within both these categories. The first one I read was by Romeo DeLaire. For the very first time, I came to the realization of just how shockingly ineffective the UN and the governments of the world can truly be. The indifference exhibited by the world community during that time is simply indefensible. The individuals whom we are supposed to be able to rely on to conduct investigations and organize relief when tragedies occur were nowhere to be found. Romeo Delaire pleaded with the UN and indirectly with the governments of the west to take action for the Tutsies who were being massacred in the most gruesome manner, with no regard for the ages or sexes of the victims. This stands out as one of the great atrocities of our era - or any era.

Philip Gourevitch has demonstrated both his talent as a writer and a journalist in this book. His dedication to his subject matter and his eagerness to follow the story wherever it led him enabled him to pen one of the most comprehensive accounts of what transpired in Rwanda during the genocide and in the subsequent years. I highly recommend this book.

The only criticism I have has nothing to do with his reporting on the genocide but rather pertains to a rather minor comment he makes at the beginning of the book where he describes Sherman's March to the Sea. He should have invested the same level of interest in uncovering the truth there as he did regarding Rwanda. While it is accurate to state that Sherman was culpable of perpetrating a genocide on Native Americans in the west subsequent to the Civil War, the description he provides of the March to the Sea is not accurate. It was not solely about murder, rape, and pillage. It was about dismantling the means for the Confederacy to wage war. There was property damage - primarily of farms and factories that supplied the war machine - but the number of people who perished was relatively small, and the number of rapes was extremely low. I teach history and I am aware that facts matter, which is the reason I raised this point. However, none of this detracts from this book which rightfully deserves all five stars that I awarded it.

This is an extremely devastating book.

It presents several family narratives within the context of genocide, hitting your soul with the profound sadness of friends, neighbors, and families being killed by those very same people.

The book does a decent job of presenting some of the causalities of the genocide without necessarily justifying it.

It also grapples with the tensions between justice and reconciliation, wondering how the post-genocide RPA government can navigate the fine line between justice and stability, between the needs of Rwanda and the stupidity and arrogance of the west, and how to build a nation from such massive destruction.

This book also delves into the politics of humanitarian aid organizations, specifically examining how these organizations funded the Hutu power exiles in Zaire and how they claimed neutrality despite being aware that Hutu Power hierarchies were reestablishing themselves in refugee camps and purchasing arms with aid money.

These organizations effectively helped to fund mass killings while providing a haven for the genociders to hide.

In many ways, the description of aid work in this book mirrors the more extensive narrative found in Maren's book.

This book is truly powerful in its sadness and the thought-provoking questions it poses, and there is far more to it than what is described in this brief review.

I read a book about the Rwandan genocide several years ago. It came to my mind again when I was reading "The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan" by Yasmin Khan. And when I was pondering the current crisis in Syria and Iraq, I picked up that book about Rwanda to reread.

What triggers genocide? What makes once-peaceful people willingly and enthusiastically participate in mass murder, rape, and other unthinkable atrocities? Like Yasmin Khan, Philip Gourevitch focuses on a detailed analysis of what was happening on the ground in the months, weeks, and days before the horror started. And like Khan, his intense dedication to primary research helps Gourevitch avoid simplistic answers. What is very clear in both cases is the extent to which deliberate incitement was to blame. In the Rwandan case, local Hutu leaders fanned the flames with provocative radio broadcasts, which even helped time and coordinate the mass violence against Tutsis.

Gourevitch does a masterful job showing how the UN and western organizations fled the scene, allowing the catastrophe to escalate unchecked. Then, in the most provocative and thought-provoking chapters of the book, he shows that the subsequent "humanitarian response" to the massive exodus of Hutus from Rwanda, fearing reprisals, led to yet another disaster as the Congolese refugee camps became centers that protected and aided the Hutu killers. As Gourevitch recalls in a recent New Yorker article, everyone knew that the Hutu génocidaires bullied and extorted aid workers and filled their war chests with taxes collected on aid rations. And they were also working their way into the surrounding Congolese territory to slaughter and drive out the local Tutsi population. The UN border camps set up after the Rwandan genocide, especially the Goma camps, are seen as the ultimate example of corrupted humanitarianism. It was obvious that there would be another war because of the camps long before it came.

All of this still makes me wonder about the subtexts for humanitarian and military aid in Syria and Iraq. From Turkey to Lebanon to Jordan, even those accepting refugees have their own hidden and not-so-hidden political agendas. The military agendas are even more muddled. In such situations, the instinctive western "fix it" mentality can do more harm than good. I have no answers, but Khan and Gourevitch's books are both essential historical reading for anyone who wants to at least ask some of the right questions.

Philip Gourevitch's "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" had its moments of poignancy, excellence, and ingenuity. However, between these great writing moments, there was too much that fell short. He spent a great deal of time detailing the history of surrounding countries and the political background of Rwanda, often repeating information. This made the political chapters feel tedious and repetitive. While this information is crucial to understanding the lead-up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, he neglected other important areas.

He gave virtually no space to gender violence during the genocide, never fully exploring the experiences of sexual violence victims and the plight of Tutsi women. He interviewed a woman named Odette, but her story was mainly about escape. There were only cursory mentions of rampant rape and sexual torture. This was a disappointment and a sign of a patriarchal perspective.

Gourevitch also let historical colonialism off too easily, suggesting that colonizers couldn't be blamed much for the genocide. I think he underestimates the insidious effects of colonialism. Living in Canada, I see the evidence of colonialism, and it's likely similar in Rwanda. He did indict France for its actions and the UN's inaction, but nearly excused the historical colonialism of Germany and Belgium.

On the positive side, I appreciated his focus on specific survivors and key figures to tell their stories. This gave the book a more up-close and real feeling. Trying to understand the reality of genocide is a losing battle, but focusing on a few people helped. No one but Rwandans can truly understand the genocide, and this book shows how hard their struggle is. Even witnesses have a hard time understanding.

For a reader in the comfort of her home, Gourevitch did a great job bringing the stories of witnesses to a point of verisimilitude, getting us as close as possible to understanding the horrors of genocide.