Life laid bare: The survivors in Rwanda speak, by Jean Hatzfeld

The former journalist and war correspondent Hatzfeld has written three books about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when 10,000 people of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. This is the first, written in French in 2000, and is made up of testimony from 14 people who survived the genocide. A second book interviews some of the killers who ended up in prison, and a third interviews both parties after the killers’ prison terms ended and they returned to live next to the Tutsi survivors. The second was actually translated before the first, and a short factual history from it is included in this book. I recommend this book for its accessibility – the witnesses talk to Hatzfeld over a period of time, and you feel their trust in his role as an impartial observer. Their stories are direct and straightforward. When they try to reason about what happened, the unbelievable nature of the genocide, instigated by the government but carried out by civilians, is etched in brutal clarity.