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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Other titles in the Bestselling Backlist series:We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwandaby Philip Gourevitch
Awards1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the George Polk Book Award Winner of the Guardian First Book Award Staff Pick
I just finished rereading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families because after reading Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning I thought that the atrocities committed in Rwanda might make more sense to me. There are eerie similarities between a group of middle-aged Nazi inductees and the masses of machete wielding Hutus who committed atrocities in the name of Hutu Power. In a sense both books are simultaneously hopeful and grim. Both prove Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil or my friend Andrew's favorite saying "everyday is your birthday when you're stupid." Not to be flip, but if you think it can't happen here, visit Cumming, Georgia and tell me how many African Americans you see. Ignorance ain't bliss if you're in the minority.
I just finished rereading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families because after reading Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning I thought that the atrocities committed in Rwanda might make more sense to me. There are eerie similarities between a group of middle-aged Nazi inductees and the masses of machete wielding Hutus who committed atrocities in the name of Hutu Power. In a sense both books are simultaneously hopeful and grim. Both prove Hannah Arendt's notion of the banality of evil or my friend Andrew's favorite saying "everyday is your birthday when you're stupid." Not to be flip, but if you think it can't happen here, visit Cumming, Georgia and tell me how many African Americans you see. Ignorance ain't bliss if you're in the minority. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable debut book chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech — largely by machete — it was carried out at shocking speed: some 800,000 people were exterminated in a hundred days. A Tutsi pastor, in a letter to his church president, a Hutu, used the chilling phrase that gives Philip Gourevitch his title. With keen dramatic intensity, Gourevitch frames the genesis and horror of Rwanda's "genocidal logic" in the anguish of its aftermath: the mass displacements, the temptations of revenge and the quest for justice, the impossibly crowded prisons and refugee camps. Through intimate portraits of Rwandans in all walks of life, he focuses on the psychological and political challenges of survival and on how the new leaders of postcolonial Africa went to war in the Congo when resurgent genocidal forces threatened to overrun central Africa. Can a country composed largely of perpetrators and victims create a cohesive national society? This moving contribution to the literature of witness tells us much about the struggle everywhere to forge sane, habitable political orders, and about the stubbornness of the human spirit in a world of extremity. Review:"[Gourevitch's] compassionate and level-headed portrait captures the immense sadness and emptiness of a country that lost a tenth of its population in a single spasm of political violence, as well as the pervasive dread that Rwanda will likely experience such bloodshed again. Gourevitch is particularly adept at systematically debunking the myths, widely circulated in the Western press, that shaped our early perceptions of what was happening in Rwanda: that the conflict was an age-old struggle between two distinct peoples bent on annihilating each other, and that this was merely another example — albeit a somewhat amplified one — of the usual 'African madness." In fact, Gourevitch writes, none of this was true. For starters, Hutus and Tutsis were sufficiently intermingled to the point that ethnographers no longer recognized them as distinct ethnic groups. In Rwanda in 1994, your identity was your politics, and the twists were many and strange; the man who coined "Hutu Power" and became one of its most rabid practitioners was born Tutsi and later acquired Hutu identity papers...." Scott Sutherland, Salon.com Review:"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 Review:"[It is the] sobering voice of witness that Gourevitch has vividly captured in his work." Wole Soyinka, The New York Times Book Review 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 Review:"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 Review:"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 Review:"[Gourevitch] has the mind of a scholar along with the observative capacity of a good novelist, and he writes like an angel. This volume establishes him as the peer of Michael Herr, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and Tobias Wolff. I think there is no limit to what we may expect from him." Robert Stone Review:"The most important book I have read in many years...[Gourevitch] examines [the genocidal war in Rwanda] with humility, anger, grief and a remarkable level of both political and moral intelligence." Susie Linfield, Los Angeles Times Review:"His compelling account should be required reading for those probing the inner workings of modern states. But the queasy and the hero-worshipers should abstain." The Washington Post Book World, Jonathan Randal About the AuthorPhilip Gourevitch is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributing editor to the Forward. He has reported from Africa, Asia, and Europe for a number of magazines, including Granta, Harper's, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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