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Top reviews from the United States

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Mazeyhunt

Remarkable story, well and personally researched book

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2015

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I started reading this book on the eve of a trip to Rwanda. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night. It's hard to reconcile what happened in Rwanda 20 years ago with what the country is today. It is a beautiful, safe and welcoming country with clean streets, good roads, beautiful schools and clinics in every town. This book gives a very good account of the history both recent and ancient that led up to the genocide in 1994. The author also carries on a few years into the future as Rwanda struggles to recover. He ends the book in 1998 wondering how the country will ever be whole again. I hope he has returned more recently to see the country's transformation. You cannot help but root for Rwandans. Theirs is an amazing success story. On a side note, be wary of the account of Paul Rusesabagina. His was the basis for the movie Hotel Rwanda. Apparently, there may be some question about the accuracy of his telling of the events at the hotel. But that is not the fault of the author. He does an amazing job tracking down both victims and genocidaires to get their stories. It's a compelling read.

le fay

This is a wonderful book. Now the people of Rwanda are showing us that forgiveness is the only way out of hell. Read it. Now.

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2015

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I read this book many years ago and I highly recommend it. I recall reading an article in my local newspaper in 1994 about a mass migration of people from Rwanda to eastern Congo. Until I read this book, I didn't realize that these "refugees" were Hutus fleeing Rwanda after Paul Kagame's RPF had taken the capital, Kigali. Now in November 2015, 21 years later, it appears there is a potential genocide brewing in Burundi, Rwanda's mirror image country to the south.

I was heartened to read the positive reviews of this book that were written in 2015, largely by young people who read it in school. This story isn't history, it's background and it is as relevant today as it was the day it was published. And, unfortunately, it's still happening all over the world.

SR

Hell on Earth

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2011

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"For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide."- Boutros Boutros Ghali.

Gourevitch weaves a work of nonfiction in this title that one is almost tempted to view as fiction. Such is the magnitude of horrors presented. Sadly, each and every piece of information from this Rwandan genocide is documented. Gourevitch explores in gory details the events of 1994 as well as the precursor building up of hostilities during and subsequent to Belgian colonial rule. What you will learn over the course of this book will chill you; each detail is more gruesome than the last. Gourevitch presents this in a clear, concise manner, providing optimal impact.

What really struck me, however, about this work was that it is NOT wholly a scholarly, detached study of the crime. It is the story of the individuals who lived through the event, as well as of those who did not. Most striking, to me, was a passage in the opening pages of the book. Gourevitch, newly landed in Rwanda, is walking with an officer of the Rwandan army. This officer accidentally steps on a skull poking through the ground. Gourevitch is disgusted, ready to denounce the man, until he feels a crunch beneath his feet. He too has trodden upon a skull, as the hillside is littered with remains.

The Hutu/Tutsi relationship was never particularly warlike. It was only upon the establishment of colonial rule, the subjugation of the majority Hutu, and the subsequent Belgian shift to support these Hutu, that created the tensions that led to the genocide in the power vacuum of post-independence. Rwanda was a tinderbox at this point, as Hutu extremists took to the airwaves, calling upon all to turn upon their Tutsi neighbors with, often, machetes. Once these extremists shot down the president's aircraft, their path was clear, as they knew help for victims would not emanate from Romeo Dallaire's already besieged UN forces (despite his best efforts) or the United States (conflict-wary following Somalia). Murder, thus, was easy in many respects.

Gourevitch tells the tale of cold-blood murder, of the failure of the international community to live up to the Genocide Convention and its own humanity, but, most importantly, of the men and women who struggled for their lives in 1994. The cry of "never again" following the Holocaust may have been a false promise, but, through works such as these, we can all attempt to promise, individually, "never again," one individual at a time.

BT Invictus

Insightful Analysis of the Rwandan Genocide

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2013

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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families is a sophisticated and thoughtful analysis of the Rwandan genocide, including the events that led up to it, as well as its lingering aftermath. Although the book has an academic edge to it, (one reviewer said that reading it made her feel as though she were "in class"), both the author's sympathy for the genocide's victims and his longing to understand its perpetrators are deeply felt by the reader. Gourevitch explores many related themes throughout the book, including the failure of the international community to use its resources to stop the genocide, the ways in which various humanitarian aid projects, knowingly and unknowingly, bolstered the Hutu Power movement by serving Hutu refugees in Zaire, the world's inability to mete out perfect, restorative justice in response to heinous crimes, and the role that other African leaders and countries played in working to resolve and prolong genocidal violence against Tutsis and moderate Hutus throughout Central Africa.

Mark Egge

Excellent But Limited Journalistic Report

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2015

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A well-written compendium of interviews conducted immediately in the aftermath of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Though an excellent on-the-ground report (much of it written during the still violent aftermath of repatriation of refugees and war in Zaire), it is necessarily limited by having been published in 1998. Those seeking a full history of the genocide should look elsewhere. This book is an extended journalistic report, not a history.

Top reviews from other countries

Saoise

Brilliant book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2019

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Least we forget. An amazingly well written account of a harrowing part of our inhumane history. So happy that Rawanda is now one of the most progressive countries in the region. It’s a place I would like to visit and pay my respects. May it prosper and the people heal.

Magdalena C

It made me cry and made me feel exasperated and disappointed in the behaviour of some of the nations that ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2015

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I bought this book on a whim because I was using university module reading lists as a guide to new books to buy. It made me cry and made me feel exasperated and disappointed in the behaviour of some of the nations that should have helped. It is a tragic story, well told.

Christopher Byrne

Informative and Sobering

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2020

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This is a well written and well worth reading book about a terribly difficult and simultaneously complex yet simple matter. I think the structure jumps around a little in the later stages but overall this is a superb introduction to one of the more terrifying episodes of human history.

BM

Must read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2008

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This is an awesome book. Written by an American journalist in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide this is an excellently written book which tells the real stories of people caught up in the fighting, along with an overview of the historical background plus a political expose of the shameful actions of the West in promoting and exacerbating the situation. i cannot recommend this highly enough. I actually couldn't put it down.

H. Callaghan

Heartbreaking and Horrifying

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2000

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Horrifying and immediate, this book deeply affected me on first reading. Gourevitch is partisan, admittedly, but then again most informed sources do seem to agree that a genocide took place in Rwanda and that would probably make most observers fairly partisan.
I must say that I found this book more affecting than Keane's, but it may well be that I read this first and it had more impact on me. Gourevitch' skill as a writer is mesmerising - I often felt I was there, whether hiding in a church, or talking to a "pygmy" in a bar, or sitting on some survivor's veranda - everything is immediate, compelling, and vivid.
The final situation, with the refugee camps and the new government, was fascinating, and an insight into a moral minefield in the aftermath of Rwanda's murderous disaster. This book haunted me for a long time after I had finished it.

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