We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families : Stories from Rwanda - Hardcover

Philip Gourevitch

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330371207 ISBN 13: 9780330371209

Publisher: Picador, 1999

Synopsis

In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide's background, and an unforgettable account of what it means to survive in its aftermath.

About this title

Review

"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.

The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan

From the Publisher

"A staggeringly good book...Gourevitch's beautiful writing drives you deep into Rwanda, his brilliant reportage tells you everything that can be seen from an event beyond imagining or explaining...He drives you, in fact, right up against the limits of what a book can do." --Tom Engelhardt, Philadelphia Inquirer

"[It is the] sobering voice of witness that Gourevitch has vividly captured in his work." --Wole Soyinka, The New York Times Book Review

"I know of few books, fiction or non-fiction, as compelling as Philip Gourevitch's account of the Rwandan genocide....As a journalist [Gourevitch] has raised the bar on us all." --Sebastian Junger

"The most important book I have read in many years...Gourevitch's book poses the preeminent question of our time: What--if anything--does it mean to be a human being at the end of the 20th century?...He examines [this question] with humility, anger, grief and a remarkable level of both political and moral intelligence." --Susie Linfield, Los Angeles Times

"Thoughtful, beautifully written, and important...we want to pass it along to our friends, and to insist that they read it because the information it contains seems so profoundly essential." --Francine Prose, Elle

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0330371207
• ISBN 13: 9780330371209
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 353