This haunting and harrowing novel about the Rwandan genocide comes from a writer called Hanna Jansen, the adoptive mother of a young girl called Jeanne. Folks who have watched the film 'Hotel Rwanda' will already have an inkling of what is to come in the story. It's a terribly important read, not just as a witness to those who were massacred, but for the western world to take responsibility for turning a blind eye to the atrocity.
The story begins with Jeanne and her siblings at her grandmother's farm, at which they spend every summer holiday. The family is large, close, and thriving. They are also Tutsi, a simple label which means only one thing in the months to come.
Jeanne's family is fairly well-to-do. Her father is a professor; her mother is a teacher; they live in a large house in the centre of a busy town and they are able to afford servants. Jeanne describes life much as any child would - the games and rivalry with her siblings, her complaints of school and just wanting to play - but all of that changes very quickly.
The Tutsis and the Hutus are the two main tribes in Rwanda. The Belgians, who had colonised it, declared the Tutsis to be the upper class and the Hutus to be the lower class. However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hutus carried out uprisings forcing Tutsis to flee. When Rwanda became independent, the Hutus formed the government. This didn't stop the Tutsis, though, who tried to invade multiple times.
This story begins in 1994, shortly before the President's plane is shot down. This comes at the worst possible time, in the middle of peace talks between the Hutus and the Tutsis. As a result, trouble brews and whispers among the Tutsis begin of Hutu violence.
It doesn't take long for this violence to come. Jeanne's father takes their whole family to a nearby commune, under the protection of the Mayor, but they are later betrayed. The Interahamwe carry out a massacre of the Tutsis under the now-ceased protection of the Mayor, and Jeanne watches her own mother being hacked to death. Jeanne escapes with her brother and father, but events later conspire which result in her father disappearing and her brother murdered in front of her.
Then, a stroke of luck. A Hutu woman, who had been married to a Tutsis (now killed), demands passes through the country to return home. She takes Jeanne and a few other children besides her own, claiming them to be relatives. An arduous journey leads them home but the men of the house make their displeasure clear. Soon, this inevitably ends in more bloodshed.
There isn't a happy ending to this story, per se. How can there be, when a young girl survives a genocide but has witnessed her family being brutally murdered and escapes by the skin of her teeth? Knowing that one million of her fellow citizens have been cut down by their former friends and neighbours? Jeanne escapes to her aunt in Germany and eventually gets adopted. This story was written as a witness to her life and her family's, and the pain of these events bleeds through every word. Hanna, the author, begins each chapter with an observation on Jeanne, how she's reacting, what this process is doing to her. It needs to be done but what is uncovered cannot ever be forgotten. Jeanne's pain becomes her own.
It's also a cry of shame for the world who turned its back on it. After the Holocaust, the world swore 'never again.' And yet genocides have occurred the world over - not to the same scale or industrial undertaking, but genocides still the same. Reading these stories is a responsibility that we shouldn't ignore.
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