Born in Rwanda in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced from childhood the violence and humiliation of the ethnic conflicts that shook her country. In 1960, her family was displaced to the polluted and under-developed Bugesera district of Rwanda. Mukasonga was later forced to leave the school of social work in Butare and flee to Burundi. She settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. In the aftermath, Mukasonga learned that 37 of her family members had been massacred. Twelve years later, Gallimard published her autobiographical account Inyenzi ou les Cafards, which marked Mukasonga's entry into literature. This was followed by the publication of La femme aux pieds nus in 2008 and L'Iguifou in 2010, both widely praised. Her first novel, Notre-Dame du Nil (Our Lady of the Nile), won the Ahamadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize in 2012, as well as the Oceans France prize in 2013 and the French Voices Award in 2014, and was shortlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary award.
A PEN Center USA 2017 Literary Awards finalist for
Translation
One of 50 best memoirs of the past 50 years — The New York
Times
"[Mukasonga’s] haunting, urgent personal history of the Rwandan
genocide (translated by Jordan Stump) will deeply shade your map."
— New York Times Book Review
"A child’s view of one of history’s most chilling instances of
genocide. . . . 'I wasn’t only Tutsi,' [Mukasonga] recalls of the
ethnic turmoil that made her a refugee, 'I was an Inyenzi, one of
those cockroaches they’d expelled from the livable part of Rwanda,
and perhaps from the human race.' Such people, she writes later,
were 'fit only to be crushed like cockroaches, with one stomp. But
they preferred to watch us die slowly.' . . . A thoughtful,
sobering firsthand account of the refugee experience, a story that
speaks to readers far beyond the African highlands." -- Kirkus
Reviews
"Related with brave, sobering, steely-eyed calm" -- Library Journal
(Starred Review)
"Harrowing ... Mukasonga’s powerful and poignant book plants itself
in that terrible absence, its stone etched with a difficult,
necessary grief." -- Publishers Weekly
"Cockroaches stands out for its bracing, unmitigated, and
often bitter ironies." — New York Review of Books
"Scholastique Mukasonga has done something extraordinary with
her autobiographical work Cockroaches. In straightforward
prose over a mere 165 pages, in a binding approximately the size of
a 5x7 family photograph, she harnesses four decades of devastating
imagery and emotion emanating from the genocide of the Tutsi people
in Rwanda. From the heartrending dedication to the last page,
Mukasonga holds the reader's aghast but rapt attention through the
hardships endured and resilience shown by her family and their
fellow refugees... Cockroaches is a haunting love letter
to the lost, beautifully written and imbued with controlled
emotion, a story to which we should all bear
witness." — Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue
Review, in Shelf Awareness
"Cockroaches is vital precisely because it reconfigures not
only a common understanding of the genocide in Rwanda, but
privileged assumptions about peace more generally ... When she
left Rwanda, Mukasonga understood that her role was “to live in the
name of others.” You get the sense that every sentence
in Cockroaches bears this weight and is,
therefore, a remarkable achievement." — Lara
Pawson, Times Literary Supplement
"Heavy, unflinchingly raw, inspiring." — Book Stalker Blog
"We are told that Rwanda is now a peaceful country; the ethnic
massacres of the 1990s are all behind them now and all is forgotten
and forgiven(?). But even before that ethnic cleansing, before the
term was even used, there were post-colonial massacres that singled
out Tutsis. Told by one who survived and thrived by some miracle
[...] Her memories are bitter and I challenge you to read this
without tears and without wondering what is to become of
humanity." — Darwin Ellis, Books on the Common
"Beautifully written in the graceful, lilting prose that
dominated Our Lady of the Nile." - Eileen
Battersby, Irish Times (Best Books of 2016)
"Written with a restraint and simplicity that touches directly...on
the heart of life, on the eye of the cyclone. There is a force to
these words, something that delves into the most profound depths of
things. Scholastique Mukasonga's voice is as if broken away from
the night, taut but pure, clear, vibrant, with a tranquil
force...Read it." --Farenheit 451
"A kind of memoir also, a real homage to the dead that Mukasonga
loved and that she stands vigil over now. This book gives them the
dignified burial that they never received." --Marie-Alix Saint-Pau,
Africa Vivre
"[Mukasonga] describes with humility the daily inferno that was her
family's existence during the years before the massacre in the
spring of '94...Sholastique Mukasonga cannot obtain reparations for
the horrors she endured, but here she accomplishes a feat of memory
and a story of surprising sobriety." --Urobepi, Coups de Coeurs
Littéraires (Et Plus)
"The genocide in Rwanda has been depicted in many ways, but few
have succeeded ... like
Scholastique Mukasonga in recreating the world that in 1994 was
shattered to pieces." — Svenska Dagbladet
"[After she was awarded the Prix Renaudot] I went out and procured
every work by
Scholastique Mukasonga.... Never has a prize been more
merited." - Frederic Beigbeder, Lire
Praise for Our Lady of the Nile (2014, Archipelago):
• A Publishers Weekly Book of the Year for
2014
• Longlisted for the International Dublin
Literary Award
• "In part, this is a good-humored yearbook
of the adventures and scandals among the all-girl school's
precocious teenage charges, where the greatest peril to morality is
the arrival of a male teacher with long blond hair. But soon the
school, abetted by its hypocritical administrators (including those
Belgian civilizers), becomes a petri dish for Hutu militancy, and
normal adolescent pranks take on horrifying consequences. The
novel's abrupt transition from a naïve coming-of-age story to a
violent tragedy is jarring--though surely it doesn't even begin to
convey the shock of the reality." - The Wall Street Journal
• "[Mukasonga's] deliciously limpid,
melodious style makes Rwandan daily life vividly accessible ...
Mukasonga expertly draws together all her threads and stories in
climactic sequences to create a skillfully-orchestrated vision,
both loving and fearful, of her beloved homeland ripped apart by
vicious racial hatred." - Shelf Awareness
• "Our Lady of the Nile swept me up with its
artful bitterness [...] [Our Lady of the Nile] is buoyed by its air
of foreboding consequence that imparts urgency to almost every
page." - Barnes & Noble Review
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