A review by litbitch
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch

5.0

I walked out of Hotel Rwanda and straight into the bookstore to buy this, which I'd been fingering (no, not like that you lech) for years. Gourevich is clear and concise about the history of Rwanda, the conditions (fostered by the Dutch and others) that led to the factional "racism" (if you want to call it that: the racial classifications were designated by outsiders) that had been obvious for years, and the specific events that led up to one of the quickest, most effective, mass-participation genocides in history. He also details the events of that time, and the lingering effects a year later, when he visited the country. He remains an outsider, but does not avoid exploring the effect the story has on him. As much as I like journalists to be neutral, neutrality in this circumstance would feel like a lie. He does all this in an extremely compelling style. I rarely get engaged in history books, and while the drama of the subject certainly helped it was his thorough and personal exploration of the extremity of this event that made this book so compelling.