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

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Rating: - An outstanding and essential read

This book changed the way I think. I watched the clips of the Rwanda genocide in the Comic Relief programme earlier this year, and while it upset and disturbed me, the empathy I felt was minimal to what this book has done for me. As Westerners we often sit back in our comfortable homes and comment on the barbaric nature of some African nations without ever contemplating and fully understanding that so many Africans have been completely at the mercy of a dictatorship with little or no power to overcome it. Why is it that so much sypathy is invested in the Holocaust, but so little in African genocide. Gourevitch exposes the so called humanitarian first world countries for their role in allowing such atrocities to occur, but also backs this up by giving the reasons why America and Europe should have been more active and instrumental, even by law, in preventing the genocide that most definately occurred. Gourevitch writes with a passion that is passed on to the reader - he evokes feelings of anger, sadness and empathy that cannot be ignored.

Rating: - This book must be read

...This book was written by a journalist and does not claim to be an academic history of Rwanda during the genocide. It's concerned more with the reasons individual people did what they did rather than a clinical reporting of facts. Its account of the complete failure of the International community to respond in an even partially adequate fashion coupled with its insights into the minds of the Rwandan people - both Hutu and Tutsi - before and after the genocide make it an absolute must read for anyone who really wants to know what happened in Central Africa over the past 10 years. That Philip Gourevitch is also a brilliant writer is just one more reason to buy this book.

Rating: - Should be read by everyone

An excellent account of a horrifying event in history, and an indictment of the Western powers which stood by and did nothing.

The book is accessible and brillianty written, and despite its topic it does not crush the spirit. Gourevitch chronicles chronicles every extreme of good and evil, form the priest who refused to help a group of desperate Tutsis, saying "you must die, God no longer wants you", to the Hutu hotel manager who risked his life and saved a thousand refugees armed only with a few friends in high places and a drinks cabinet to bribe the genocidal soldiers.

The book is a work of journalism, and people who want a comprehensive and fully referenced academic work may want to look elsewhere, and at times the author does perhaps treat the RPF too uncritically, but these are minor complaints.

As a document of genicide, and as an insight into the dark side of the human soul, this is almost the equal of Primo Levi's "If This is a Man"

Rating: - Heartbreaking and Horrifying

Horrifying and immediate, this book deeply affected me on first reading. Gourevitch is partisan, admittedly, but then again most informed sources do seem to agree that a genocide took place in Rwanda and that would probably make most observers fairly partisan.

I must say that I found this book more affecting than Keane's, but it may well be that I read this first and it had more impact on me. Gourevitch' skill as a writer is mesmerising - I often felt I was there, whether hiding in a church, or talking to a "pygmy" in a bar, or sitting on some survivor's veranda - everything is immediate, compelling, and vivid.

The final situation, with the refugee camps and the new government, was fascinating, and an insight into a moral minefield in the aftermath of Rwanda's murderous disaster. This book haunted me for a long time after I had finished it.

Rating: - Well Worth the Read!

If you are at all interested in history, cultures or Africa you will enjoy this book. I was amazed at how Gourevitch painted the story with his words...or the words of the many involved in this conflict. I often found myself stopping to think beyond the pages and to shake my head at how hatred could run so deep.

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