Rating: 
Summary: Raw and compelling, the abyss gazes back at you ...
Review: In a transcendent tour de force, Philip Gourevitch takes one of the most horrifying events of the late 20th century, and manages to find the elements of hope and meaning that make this book more than the sum of the body parts it describes as scattered around a church in Nyarubuye, Rwanda.On the surface, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" is a graphic account of the 1994 genocide in which the "Hutu Power" government led its citizens to slaughter 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors in only 100 days ... while the international community stood by and watched helplessly. In a greater sense, however, this is a story about how people imagine the world to be, and the terrible consequences that follow when they lose their humanity in trying to create such a world. It is about the nature of evil, and the power of forgiveness and justice to reclaim the future without forgetting the past. This is a difficult and painful book to read, but not for the obvious reasons. The atrocities committed by the killers are brought to light in considerable detail, however Gourevitch does this in an almost semi-detached and dispassionate way. His real moral outrage seems to be reserved for the so-called "civilized" countries that could have stopped the genocide, but instead did nothing until it was too late ... and then compounded their foreign policy sins by aiding the Hutu murderers in refugee camps. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around. Gourevitch provides extensive evidence that there were many warning signs of the impending massacres. He outlines the brief history of ethnic antagonisms that led to the crimes, and explains why the Clinton Administration, the United Nations (including current U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan), and the former colonial powers in Africa (such as France) all refused to intervene to halt the butchery. The French even took steps to keep it going. Gourevitch is particularly good at placing the genocide into a context that shows why our political leaders were too paralyzed to get involved and risk doing anything to save lives. Basically, it seems to come down to the fact that Rwanda has no oil, the victims were black, and the timing was all wrong (U.S. Rangers had just been shot to death and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia only weeks earlier). Putting aside the official excuses for inaction, though, perhaps the best thing about this book is how Gourevitch tells so much of his tale in the words of the Rwandans themselves--both those accused of condoning or participating in the violence, and those who suffered from it. From Odette Nyiramilimo, a doctor who had several members of her immediate family killed, to Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who protected 1,000 or more Tutsis from harm by using a mixture of simple bravery and shrewd psychology, the writer has extracted narratives of extraordinary courage under even the most brutal conditions. He struggles not to judge pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the clergyman who ignored his doomed ministers' pleas to be spared the carnage, but cannot conceal his admiration for Rwandese Patriotic Front Major General Paul Kagame, who eloquently said: "People are not inherently bad. But they can be made bad. And they can be taught to be good." Contrasted with the American military intelligence officer who cynically compared the genocide to a cheese sandwich (because nobody cares about either), it is easy to understand why Gourevitch holds Kagame in higher esteem. "We Wish to Inform You ..." is not a perfect book. As others have noted, it really needs an index (or at least a glossary) to help the reader keep track of the various acronyms of organizations (for example, RPF, FAR, UNAMIR), characters (Major General Romero Dallaire, Rwandan ex-President Habyarimana, and USAID worker Bonaventure Nyibizi) and groups (such as the "interahamwe" Hutu Power militias). Also, Gourevitch begins to lose his focus on the genocide in the second half of his story. He spends a lot of time and dozens of pages pursuing blind alleys about the misguided humanitarian relief efforts in the nearby Congolese refugee camps, and getting sidetracked with the downfall of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. When the author returns to Rwanda, and explores how the new government there had to struggle to pull the nation together again, he is clearly back on firmer ground. His investigation into the problems faced by survivors of the genocide, being asked to live peacefully alongside their former tormentors, is especially moving. The mass murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda occurred even more efficiently and ruthlessly than did the Nazi measures to impose a "final solution" on the Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. And yet, for all of the promises that the Western democracies uttered 50 years ago to "never again" permit the attempted extermination of an ethnic group anywhere else, it did ... and very recently, too. The rate at which the Hutus killed the Tutsis was truly sickening, but maybe the way it was allowed to happen should trouble us even more. As Gourevitch points out in this fine book, which won the coveted George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, the nightmare that gripped Rwanda in April 1994 went largely uncovered by the international press. Americans heard little about it. "We Wish to Inform You ..." may change that. It ranks up there with "Night" by Elie Wiesel and "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer as one of the most disturbing but inspirational tales of human savagery and individual nobility one is ever likely to read. In a self-absorbed pop culture that too often force feeds the public a steady diet of happy talk, "We Wish to Inform You ..." offers a strong dose of perspective, with a sobering reminder that we share this planet with other people who have real problems. There is always a danger in taking action. There is always a cost in not taking it. Maybe next time, when faced with such a bloodbath, the world will show some of the same simple human decency as those Hutu girls who, when told to separate themselves from the Tutsis, "could have chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans."
Rating:
Summary: The Anatomy of an Atrocity
Review: In "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," Philip Gourevitch goes far beyond the media descriptions of the Rwandan genocide in explaining not just how but why it happened. His travels in Rwanda began in 1995 almost a year after the Hutu led government rallied its supporters and carried out the organized slaughter of the Tutsi minority. Much of the book tells the chilling stories of indidivual survivors as well as those who participated in the massacre. It is these stories that give the book much of its power because, much like Daniel Goldhagen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" they demonstrate how normal people can become tools of a corrupt and authoritarian regime that uses race as a means to control its people. In explaining the causes of one of the worst cases of "democide" in the 20th century, Gourevitch exposes the complicity of the US, UN, and the French. But the real blame rests in the history of 20th century European imperialism. Gourevitch goes far back in the history of Rwanda to explain how the Hutus and Tutsis lived in peaceful coexistence until the Belgians, relying on outdated theories of eugenics, segregated the two tribes and favored the "regal" looking Tutsis over the Hutus. Racial identity cards and inequitable opportunities for education and employment that favored the Tutsi minority led to tensions that exploded after Rwanda gained independence in the 1950s. Blame for the resulting series of Tutsi massacres falls on those who established the system and perpetuated the myth of racial differences. This book will leave you with doubts about the capability of the international community to prevent similar atrocities in the future as well as the sincerity of governments that, while professing the importance of human rights, allow hundreds of thousands to die before responding with too little, too late.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent writing and journalism.
Review: This was an excellent book. It gives an adequate undertsanding of the history of the region, an account of the genocide and also a very interesting look at the aftermath and the results of the ongoing fighting that eventually lead to the ousting of Joseph Mobutu (Sese Soko). Gourevitch does not fall into the 'old ethnic hatreds' trap and duly notes that Hutu-Tutsi animosity is a fairly recent development in central African society. This is a profoundly dynamic account of one of the most horrible examples of human depravity in history, and it reminds the world of the on-going problem with the so-called international community and its incredible impotence in the face of evil.
Rating:
Summary: A required text for the 21st century
Review: In early May 1994 I stood on a bridge over the river that forms the border between Rwanda and Tanzania and observed corpses floating down towards Lake Victoria in an unbroken stream. As I write this, two Rwandan women are taking the unprecedented action of suing the United Nations for its failure to intervene in the worst act of genocide since WW2. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who played a kay role in UN decision-making in 1994, has confessed the UN's "failure" and expressed his own "deep remorse." 800,000 people died, most of them hacked to death with machetes by their neighbours. How this happened, and how the world utterly failed in its self-appointed role to prevent exactly such a holocaust, is the subject of this beautifully written, accessible and compelling book. Gourevitch wants to know WHAT happened, and through interviews with survivors, gives us the clearest and most comprehensive understanding I have yet seen. It is not pretty reading, although Gourevitch's dispassionate and sensitive writing makes it possible to get through material that in coarser hands would be impossible to stomach. He also describes the HOW. For years it was evident to the West - and most particularly to France and Belgium - that Hutu factions were gathering their strength to strike at the Tutsi minority. Every day Hutu radio stations ran violent anti-Tutsi propaganda, in which Tutsis and any moderate Hutus who were not interested in killing them were warned to prepare to die. When the killing began, it was simply the next logical step in a process that had long been underway. The case seems impossible to refute - indeed, the UN's internal investigation which published its report in December 1999 does NOT refute - that the genocide was both broadly predictable, and could have been ameliorated, if not altogether stopped, by effective international intervention. The legal knots the UN allowed to create for itself, so that "blue-helmets" felt they could not act to save a woman being raped and hacked to pieces, because their mandate allowed for only their own self-defence, are just one example of how international law can - sometimes - ENCOURAGE crimes against humanity. The lessons of Rwanda, painfully learnt, will influence the way the so-called "world community" responds to massive ethnic eruptions for a generation to come. To begin to understand this most painful event in recent human history, this book cannot be too highly recommended. If there is one small niggle, it is the lack of an index, something that I hope will be addressed in future editions.
Rating:
Summary: Very moving
Review: Well written and researched book about the genocide in Rwanda, it's aftermath, and the history that preceded it. Gourevich is a sharp analyst and is biting in his criticism. My only complaint was that too many of the personal stories seemed to come from people he met in a single hotel. It's one of the best books out there in it's effect on informing the West and waking people up. I gave a copy to a friend in Tanzania who is half-Tutsi. He and his family were very impressed by the book and want a copy for their family library The opening and end of the book are especially moving..
Rating:
Summary: why does genocide happen?
Review: This book is one of the best books I have ever read. Ever. It is certainly not an uplifting book. In three months, the Hutu power regime in Rwanda killed 800,000 minority Tutsis. The book tries to answer the question of why genocide happens. what can compel one people, living side by side with another people for centuries, to rise up and mass kill? What drives Hutu, who's wife might be a Tutsi, to kill his wife's brother and mother? What drives mass rapes? What drives a man to hack up his neighbor into bits with a machete? why does this happen? Philip Gourevitch writes an amazing and detailed account of Rwanda and of its neighboring countries like Uganda and the Congo (formerly Zaire). Gourevitch has incredible access to the leaders of these countries and his "man on the street" interviews are extremely revealing and mind-expanding. The book was given to me by a friend who said that I "had to read this book!" And it just sat on my bookshelf for a long time. After about a year, I dusted it off and read it. I am a better person for it. Summation: Don't wait a year, read this book now.
Rating:
Summary: Stories of a real horror we should all know and remember
Review: I have various views of this book. First, it is a very important account of one of the great tragedies of our time. It upsets me that we still only speak of this tragedy without enough specificity. It is too often just a conversation about the million killed in Rwanda without enough focus on who did the killing. It wasn't just a tribe against another. It was people hacking others to death. This book gets us to some of those individuals - both those murdered and those murdering - and that is the chief reason to appreciate the book and thank Mr. Gourevitch for it. However, I wish there some images in the book beyond the couple of maps. Yes, Mr. Gourevitch is a fine writer and helps us see with words. But this kind of genocide cries out for photographic documentation. Maybe there isn't any that is appropriate for the book. But I feel the lack just the same. Finally, this is an important document of the Rwandan terror, but it isn't the final story. It isn't the complete story. That has yet to be written. But I found reading this book a strange sort of nightmare. Everything seems real and it has its own frightening impetus, but it is like a dream where you want things to stop but it won't. It is horrifying and even worse because it all happened to real people and in our time. And notice how everyone runs from accountability. It seems like everyone wants to pretend someone else did it and when you find someone who actually can't run away from involvement they want to pretend it was some awful force that made people unavoidably crazy and should therefore be forgotten. What hogwash. Thanks to Mr. Gourevitch for getting these stories in print for us. I hope we burn these stories in our memory.
Rating:
Summary: A Passionate Telling of an Unforgettable Horror
Review: Anyone interested in the 20th Century genocides of various ethnic groups including the Armenians, the Jews, the Bosnians, and the Rwandans will find this book very informative, shocking, and accurately told. An extremely interesting book about a horrible 20th Century problem: Genocide.
Rating:
Summary: Genocide ignored
Review: Gourevitch does a good job of filling in at least some of the gaps in the average reader's - western reader at least - knowledge of Rwanda and its people. Even readers who are fairly savvy and aware of world news can expect to have their understanding of the Rwandan genocide challenged. It is deeply disturbing to know that such things can happen in the world and even when news agencies and international humanitarian groups have observers present not only is nothing done to stop them but they are barely acknowledged.
Rating:
Summary: Moving Experience
Review: Gurevitch tells a wonderfully moving, and disturbing portrait of one of the most horrifying experiences of civil war and genocide in the 20th century. And he tells it the only way it should be told - recounted through the eyes, ears and mouths of both the perpetrators and survivors. Amazing and harrowing, ... you will never think of the words "Never Again" in quite the same way.
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