Description
In 1994, the akazu, Rwandan's political elite, planned the genocidal mass slaughter of 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and Hutu who lived in the country. Given the failure of the international community to acknowledge the genocide, in 1998, ten African authors visited Rwanda in a writing initiative that was an attempt to make partial amends. In this multidimensional novel, Abdourahman A. Waberi claims, Language remains inadequate in accounting for the world and all its turpitudes, words can never be more than unstable crutches, staggering along . . . And yet, if we want to hold on to a glimmer of hope in the world, the only miraculous weapons we have at our disposal are these same clumsy supports. Shaped by the author's own experiences in Rwanda and by the stories shared by survivors, Harvest of Skulls stands twenty years after the genocide as an indisputable resource for discussions on testimony and witnessing, the complex relationship between victims and perpetrators, the power of the moral imagination, and how survivors can rebuild a society haunted by the ghost of its history.
Author: Abdourahman A. Waberi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 02/20/2017
Pages: 78
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.19d
ISBN13: 9780253024329
ISBN10: 0253024323
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | General
About the Author
Abdourahman A. Waberi is a novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer. Born in Djibouti, he is Professor of French and Francophone literature at George Washington University. The author of Transit, In the United States of Africa, Passage of Tears, and La Divine Chanson, he has been awarded the Stefan-Georg-Preis, the Grand Prix Littéraire d'Afrique noire, and the Prix biennal Mandat pour la liberté. He was named one of the 50 Writers of the Future by the French literary magazine Lire.
Dominic Thomas is Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.