Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Dec 17, 2009

Brendan rated it:

To be honest, Gourevitch's book doesn't sound inviting. What book about genocide could? And its title alone suggests a kind of vicious, heart-stopping sadness that many of us would prefer to turn away from. Which may, in fact, be the point. Either way, Gourevitch's writing won't let you turn away. He tells the story of the Rwandan genocide in a prose so wonderfully crafted and infused with anger and insight as to be nearly hypnotic. From the opening pages, the young reporter confronts his own ve More...

0 comments like (22 people liked it)

Jun 24, 2008

Heidi rated it:

This is not an easy book to read. But Gourevitch takes a tragedy about which most of the world knows very little -- the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994 -- and he thoroughly explores it, and along the way he humanizes it. This is a story about genocide, about war and politics, yes, but moreover it's a story about the people who lived through the horror of genocide, and those who died. Gourevitch talks to anyone who will tell him their story, it seems: survivors of the genocide, military offici More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Chrisiant rated it:

I read this book while volunteering in Burundi, a country that has experienced a parallel civil conflict to that of Rwanda, but with much less international attention.

The book is full of chilling stories, exposing both the horror of the actions of the Rwanda orchestrators of the genocide, the willing and complicit participants in carrying out the genocide, and the willful inaction and facilitation of the conflict by international actors, including the U.S. government.

More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Tenzing rated it:

Here's the review of this book I put on my blog:
On the flight home I read Philip Gourevitch’s ` We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families’. In spite of many accolades for the author, I didn’t like his writing. However, the book is worth reading as a disturbing reminder of the violence and cruelty man is capable of committing in the name of such recently constructed ideas as ethnicity and nationalism. This sort violence is perhaps among the most serious problem More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

stephanie rated it:

possibly one of the best books i've read on rwanda. horribly depressing, horribly great, just.

absolutely wonderful work. i put it second to The Age of Genocide only because that is possibly the end all book on genocide, because of it's breath, scope, and wonderful, wonderful history.

but this is maybe the best book on rwanda i've read. and read again. and again.

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Rikelle rated it:

How do you rate a book that is about something so absolutely horrible. When I was younger I remember reading books on the holocaust and thinking this could never happen again. How naive I was. Not only has it happened again, it continues to happen and the world barely notices. I have read books about the Rwandan genocide from the victim's point of view. Those books give you the horrible gut wrenching emotional side of it. This book helps you understand the political side of it. My only gripe is More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2008

Danny rated it:

Although I read this book only recently, over a decade after the events of the genocide in Rwanda I think that time has only reinforced and strengthened the impact of this book. While I cannot claim to have been old enough to be properly plugged into the political landscape during as the events were unfolding, it is indeed damning that I could have come away from all of the news coverage that the genocide eventually produced with such a deeply flawed understanding of the massacre.

“We More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2008

Jennie rated it:

How can you call a book about genocide great? It was informative and powerful. Tragic and very very sad. It made me so angry at times I had to put it down for fear I would throw it across the room. This book had me so frustrated with the politics involved that I just want to scream in frustration.
I have to add some of the most powerful, to me, statements made in this book:
"In May of 1994, I happened to be in Washington to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, an imm More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 31, 2008

Jack rated it:

This is a devastating book. It gives a few family narratives in the context of genocide and hits your soul with the sadness of friends and neighbors and families killed by friends and neighbors and family. The book does a descent job of giving some causalities to the genocide without necessarily falling into justification. It also works with the tensions of justice and reconciliation wondering how the post genocide RPA government can navigate between the lines of justice and stability, betwee More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2007

Clare rated it:

just to get it out of the way up front, this book blew me away. it is extremely difficult to get through, both because of the gruesomely accurate description of the genocide as well as the length and density of the writing. but i think gourevitch did a great job of painting a "big picture" of the issues that led to such an event and brilliantly told some stories that have left me in awe even to this day.

what i kept seeing come up again and again was the idea that as horribl More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2007

Chris rated it:

This is a remarkable book and possibly one of the most difficult I have ever read.

In 1994 over 800,000 people were killed in the systematic genocide of Rawanda, brought about by racial tension, prejudice, ignorance and group-think insanity. It is hard to understand or appreciate how in the space of 100 days so many people could be killed- neighbor against neighbor, family against family- and for it to happen is such a dispassionate fashion. People simply rounded up, or cornered and r More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Tim rated it:

A first hand examination of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Gives a number of survivor stories, a thorough look at the country in it's aftermath (up to 1998). An excellent view of the international communities role in the genocide, it's inaction, and the debacle of humanitarian aid which aggravated the situation and wound up giving money and supplies to many of the Genocidaires. It did not seem to be as explanatory of the causes of the genocide or the organization and planning and execution. Thes More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 14, 2009

Kathleen added it

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories of Rwanda.
Philip Gourevitch.
Narrated by Jeff Cummings, produced by Blackstone and downloaded from Audible.

This book took the author three years to write. He went to Rwanda in 1995, made at least eight trips to Rwanda in the next few years, finally publishing the book in 1998. The publisher’s note says as much as I could, and much better. I am still reeling from this book and want to fi More...

0 comments like

Dec 23, 2011

Casey rated it:

The best book to read about the genocide in Rwanda. I took a recent trip and to prepare I absorbed as much as I could that was readily available. There is a great documentray called "Shake Hands with the Devil" that I watched about General Dallaire, the Canadian UN Commander. I looked at General Dallaires book by the same name, too big but I understand it is great as well. If you want a good overall account of what happened and why, Gourevitch gives equal parts background informati More...

0 comments like

Dec 13, 2011

CJ rated it:

I have always felt an obligation to read books like this - books written about the terrible things human beings do to one another. In 1994, I was safe in my little house taking care of my 3-year-old son. Not worrying that we would be hacked to death by our machete-wielding neighbors. People we'd lived next to for years without incident.

I read these books to try and understand why. I know that it's unlikely I'll ever be satisfied with the answer, but I continue to try. Gourevitch does More...

0 comments like

May 01, 2011

Jessica rated it:

This book details the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-nineties, and I must confess that prior to reading this book, I knew next to nothing about what had been going on in that country while in this country we obsessed about Desert Storm and I passed through junior high, high school, and college. In Rwanda, two ethnic groups that had lived side-by-side for centuries turned against each other, with Hutus declaring that Tutsis were not true Rwandans and needed to be eliminated from the country. In Ap More...

0 comments like

Mar 29, 2011

Melissa rated it:

When I would tell my friends about how great of a book this is, I got a lot of, "I can't read that, it's too upsetting." This came from my progressive, non-profit sector, CSA-share owning friends. And I know what they mean. But seriously, you should read this book anyway.

And not just because it's important to understand the things that have gone on in this world in our time (and before) in order to change the future. Also because Gourevitch discusses some things in this b More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 30, 2010

Ann rated it:

This was an incredibly thorough book dealing with the Rwandan genocide. It was an intensely emotional and difficult book to read. I had to keep puting it down in order to try to digest the incredible injustices that were involved in the lead- up and the aftermath of the genocide that nearly decimated an entire tribe of African peoples. The author does a phenominal job of painting the historical lead-up to the genocide ... then follows the stories of a number of Rwandans as they tell their person More...

0 comments like

Aug 31, 2010

Nikki rated it:

The title of this book alone was enough to capture my attention, drawing me in to take a closer look.

The brilliance of this book is two fold for me. First, I believe that this literary masterpiece quickly dispels the all too common belief that genocides are a thing of the past, with many citing the Holocaust as the last known one. Secondly, Gourevitch's approach to such a devastating and horrific event is nothing short of profound.

I realize some felt that this book la More...

0 comments like

Nov 05, 2009

Eileen rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 26, 2009

Debbie (Readerbuzz) rated it:

Okay, it's only been three years. I started We wish to inform you yesterday, but the details were so grim I had to stop reading for a while and do something a little less painful.

This morning, I was startled to read an interview in Oprah with Paul Rusesabagina, the man who hid 1,268 people in his hotel during the terrible civil war described in We wish to inform you. A hard book to read, but obviously it is one I should be reading.

Later:
A very hard book for More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 15, 2009

Wendy added it

I read this for an English independent reading project. I felt that this book was a really well written book because it composes of many primary sources. Such as letter, quote, songs, poem and etc. The conflict that this book deals with was the Rwanda Genocide. What i found best about this book was that it creates an image for both the hutsis and the tusis. You create you own and and stand for the justice you believe in. This books answers a lot of questions that may be swirling in our heads. Su More...

0 comments like

Mar 17, 2010

Kit rated it:

Considering the unit is about diplomacy, I needed to do a 'diplomatic' reading for this book. But in the end I just read, like Leontius who shouted at the sight of corpses tempting him not to look, admitting his defeat, that in the end, one has to look, and look closely (I can't talk I sped through this book).

Genocide is a social phenomenon that is both terrifying and fascinating. What compelled the thousands and thousands (tens or hundreds of thousands) of Hutus to hack off the bod More...

0 comments like

Jul 16, 2011

Eva rated it:

This was a fine book, but I was frustrated at my inability to understand the dynamics that led to the Rwandan genocide and the conflict more broadly. It's a pretty big jump from entrenched racism to taking a machete and hacking people to death. I guess I'll never understand.

Despite that frustrating aspect of the narrative, there were some striking quotes:

==

All at once, as it seemed, something we could have only imagined was upon us--and we could still only ima More...

0 comments like

Jul 02, 2011

Kathleen rated it:

There are no firm figures on how many people perished in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Possibly one million, perhaps more. But each of them were a son or daughter. Each were loved by their families. The women, even the youngest of them, were raped, often repeatedly, and often in front of their children, their brothers, their friends, their mothers and fathers. They were not gassed or shot (at least not most of them.) They were mostly hacked to death with machetes and hoes, by their own neighbors More...

1 comment like

Feb 27, 2011

Josephine rated it:

One of the women Philip Gourevitch interviewed in this book, Odette, asked him, “Do the people in America really want to read this? People tell me to write these things down, but it’s written inside of me. I almost hope for the day when I can forget.”

Several years ago, I watched “Hotel Rwanda” and the one thing that always stuck with me was the one scene where hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina asks a reporter incredulously, “How can they not do anything? Don’t they care?”

T More...

0 comments like

Feb 02, 2010

Jesse rated it:

Why would I want to read 350 pages on such an unpleasant subject? To be honest, I've wondered that myself. The author of the book, Philip Gourevitch, apparently wondered the same thing as to why he would research and write such a book. He starts Part I of the book by quoting from Plato in The Republic:

Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was coming up from the Peiraeus, close to the outer side of the north wall, when he saw some dead bodies lying near the executioner, and he felt a desire t More...

0 comments like

Aug 11, 2009

Jason rated it:

The week spent reading Gourevitch's fantastic book has been an intense one. The amount of detail, humanity, and grace in the book is exceptional. I feel confident in comparing the author's work with the great chronicler of the "third world" Ryszard Kapuściński. He shares the the intense skeptical eye of western influence. Gourevitch goes to great lengths to show the detrimental work done by state governments and the "international community," particularly with aid organizati More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2010

Badly Drawn Girl rated it:

This book is so important. I hear so many people saw that they don't enjoy reading "depressing" books and I know that reading is often an escape. But books are also powerful teaching tools. I had this book in a stack of "to read" books for months. I kept bypassing it for more uplifting books. Finally I reached the end of the stack, and picked it up. And I couldn't stop reading it. Yes, it's eye opening, it's sad, it's heavy, but it's also beautiful and moving and More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 03, 2011

Kerri rated it:

An excellent history of the Rwandan Genocide, Gourevitch covers, in depth, the events from the time of Rwandan independence in the late 1950s/early 1960s, to the reconstruction and reconciliation period after the genocide in 1994. Skillfully woven throughout the history are the personal and heartbreaking stories of individual survivors, as well as the stories of those accused of participating in the killing. In addition, the author had access to those in power and the book includes extensive in More...

0 comments like

reviews