Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know is the long-awaited follow-up to Philip Gourevitch's classic We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Can a country recover from annihilating ethno-political polarization and violence? What future can a people defined by trauma imagine, much less realize?
Philip Gourevitch's unforgettable book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families--a modern classic--opened our eyes to the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda as one of the defining experiences of humankind: in a hundred days as many as a million people were murdered by their fellow citizens, and the world refused to stop it. Now Gourevitch brings us another fiercely moving and essential literary reckoning. Drawn from twenty-five years of reporting on the aftermath of the slaughter, You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know grapples with the burdens of memory and forgetting, of bloody division and enforced unity, of accountability and denial, of confession and forgiveness. Combining travelogue and investigative reportage, intimate personal testimony and national and global political debates, Gourevitch's dramatic stories of survivors and killers living again as neighbors, against all expectations, are charged with immense moral and political significance. As he returns over the years to the same cluster of peasant families on one small hill, the stories become at once more complicated and more meaningful--more complete and more resistant to journalistic simplification.
In this powerful and necessary book, Gourevitch explores the challenges of forging a national future, and a habitable past, after near annihilation. By turns harrowing and exalting, You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know illuminates the human condition as only great art can.
Synopsis
An astonishing chronicle of twenty-five years of co-existence in the aftermath of annihilating division -- the highly anticipated and timely follow-up to PG's multiple award-winning best seller We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda
Philip Gourevitch's unforgettable modern classic We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families opened our eyes to the 1994 genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority: close to a million people murdered by their neighbors in one hundred days. Now Gourevitch brings us a staggeringly vivid and intimate exploration of how killers and survivors live together again in the same communities, grappling with seemingly impossible burdens of memory and forgetting, denial and confession, vengefulness and forgiveness.
A fiercely beautiful literary reckoning, You Hide That You Hate Me And I Hide That I Know is the culmination of twenty-five years of reporting on the aftermath of the slaughter. The book take its title from a stark Rwandan adage that speaks to the uneasy trade-offs that reconciliation after near annihilation demands. Since the genocide, Rwanda has engaged in the most ambitious and sweeping process of accountability ever undertaken by any society. "Truth Heals" was the slogan. But truth also wounds. And truth is always contested.
As Gourevitch returns repeatedly over the decades to the same families in one small hillside village, their accounts of killing and surviving, and of the life after, inform and enlarge one another, becoming ever more complex and more charged with significance for us all. These stories are at once as essential and as extreme as classical myths, illuminating the ways that we seek, individually and collectively, to negotiate our irreparable pasts in pursuit of a more habitable future. This deeply moving book continuously invites us - as only great writing can - to think, and to think again.
Synopsis
Philip Gourevitch's unforgettable modern classic We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families opened our eyes to the 1994 genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority: Close to a million people were murdered by their neighbors in one hundred days. Now Gourevitch brings us an astonishingly vivid and intimate exploration of how killers and survivors live together again in the same communities, grappling with seemingly impossible burdens of memory and forgetting, denial and confession, vengefulness and forgiveness.
A fiercely beautiful literary reckoning, You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know--the culmination of twenty-five years of reporting on the aftermath of the slaughter--takes its title from a stark Rwandan adage that speaks to the uneasy trade-offs that reconciliation after near annihilation demands. Since the genocide, Rwanda has engaged in the most ambitious and sweeping process of accountability ever undertaken by any society. "Truth Heals" was the slogan. But truth also wounds. And truth is always contested.
As Gourevitch returns repeatedly over the decades to the same families in one hillside village, their accounts of killing and surviving, and of the life after, inform and enlarge one another, becoming ever more complex and charged with significance. These stories are at once as essential and as extreme as classical myths, illuminating the ways that we seek, individually and collectively, to negotiate our irreparable pasts in pursuit of a more habitable future. This deeply moving book continuously invites us--as only great writing can--to think, and to think again.
Synopsis
The highly anticipated and timely follow-up to Philip Gourevitch's award-winning bestseller We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.
Philip Gourevitch's unforgettable modern classic We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families opened our eyes to the 1994 genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority: Close to a million people were murdered by their neighbors in one hundred days. Now Gourevitch brings us an astonishingly vivid and intimate exploration of how killers and survivors live together again in the same communities, grappling with seemingly impossible burdens of memory and forgetting, denial and confession, vengefulness and forgiveness.
A fiercely beautiful literary reckoning, You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know--the culmination of twenty-five years of reporting on the aftermath of the slaughter--takes its title from a stark Rwandan adage that speaks to the uneasy trade-offs that reconciliation after near annihilation demands. Since the genocide, Rwanda has engaged in the most ambitious and sweeping process of accountability ever undertaken by any society. "Truth Heals" was the slogan. But truth also wounds. And truth is always contested.
As Gourevitch returns repeatedly over the decades to the same families in one hillside village, their accounts of killing and surviving, and of the life after, inform and enlarge one another, becoming ever more complex and charged with significance. These stories are at once as essential and as extreme as classical myths, illuminating the ways that we seek, individually and collectively, to negotiate our irreparable pasts in pursuit of a more habitable future. This deeply moving book continuously invites us--as only great writing can--to think, and to think again.