About the Author

Philip Gourevitch is a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker and a former editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of Standard Operating Procedure/The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, A Cold Case, and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, which won numerous honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was counted by the Guardian among the 100 best nonfiction books of all time.

Reviews

"[It is the] sobering voice of witness that Gourevitch has vividly captured in his work." --Wole Soyinka, The New York Times Book 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 "A sobering, revealing, and deeply thoughtful chronicle." --The Boston Globe "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 "Shocking and important . . . clear and balanced . . . the voice in this book is meticulous and humane." --Michael Pearson, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Astonishing . . . [Gourevitch] is masterful at placing the unspeakability of mass murder into actual people's mouths and inhabiting it in actual people's stories." --Mark Gevisser, Newsday "Unsettlingly beautiful . . . brilliant . . . this is a staggeringly good book . . . [It] should be on bookshelves forever." --Tom Engelhardt, The Philadelphia Inquirer

In 1994, the world was informed of the inexplicable mass killings in Rwanda, in which over 800,000 were killed in 100 days. Gourevitch, a staff writer for The New Yorker, spent over three years putting together an oral history of the mass killing that occurred in this small country. He interviewed the survivors, who told him their horror stories of violence. Most of the killings were done with a machete. Friends killed friends, teachers killed students, and professional workers killed co-workers. The United Nations was slow in reacting to this crisis and refused to classify the incident as genocide. The title of this book comes from a Tutsi pastor's letter to his church president, a Hutu. While this is a powerful book, it sometimes bogs down in the details of Rwandan politics. It is doubtful the average reader will want to pick it up, but the history of this genocide must be told. This book should find itself on the shelves of academic libraries where African history collections are strong. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/98.]‘Michael Sawyer, Northwestern Regional Lib., Elkin, NC

"[It is the] sobering voice of witness that Gourevitch has vividly captured in his work." --Wole Soyinka, The New York Times Book 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 "A sobering, revealing, and deeply thoughtful chronicle." --The Boston Globe "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 "Shocking and important . . . clear and balanced . . . the voice in this book is meticulous and humane." --Michael Pearson, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Astonishing . . . [Gourevitch] is masterful at placing the unspeakability of mass murder into actual people's mouths and inhabiting it in actual people's stories." --Mark Gevisser, Newsday "Unsettlingly beautiful . . . brilliant . . . this is a staggeringly good book . . . [It] should be on bookshelves forever." --Tom Engelhardt, The Philadelphia Inquirer