The Revenge of Blood-Red Rivers

by Martin Lundqvist

After surviving the Rwandan genocide, Samantha sets out to avenge her family.
This book follows the adolescent Samantha Nyamwasa as she travels through a war-torn Rwanda during the genocide of Tutsis in 1994. Samantha survives rape, genital mutilation, and the murder of her family. Despite all her ordeals, she stays strong and is determined to reach her goal, to murder Colonel Patrick Bagosora and avenge her family.

78 pages, Paperback

Published February 12, 2021

Reviews

[teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Must Read

You have seen Rawanda hotel then you will want to read this book. If you ha snot seen the movie you need to, and read this book.

[Lina · Rating 1 out of 5]

You could write anything about anyone, and you could be racist and sexist along the way. There are interesting narrative techniques used here though. But the book isn't about this little girl, but about a white man trying, again, to get everywhere and imagine everyone even when it isn't even his story. Crazy how much terrible things this little girl can suffer... And what she wants is revenge? That's absurd. The white male author knows nothing about women, wounds or the Tutsi. He just wants to occupy everything, like the story of black people, of women, of everything that doesn't belong to him. It's despicable.
Oh, by the way, the saviour is an Australian.

[Mattpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting, incredible book that I really like.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you imagine loving a book about the massacre of the Tutsis in Rwanda? Or loving a book where the main character, a young girl, sees the slaughtered bodies of her father, brother and neighbours, and watches her naked, brutalized and raped mother take her last breath then later is herself raped and genitally mutilated? I know it seems unlikely that anyone would enjoy that book. I can’t say I did but I did love the way it was written and Martin Lundqvist’s The Revenge of Blood-Red Rivers, like Miller’s book Hotel Rwanda (and the movie based on it), will stay with me forever. It’s a departure from the author’s science fiction works not only in subject matter but in style. To me, The Revenge of Blood-Red Rivers was a more personal story of the Rwandan genocide written in a memoir like style that starts with the massacre and concludes with justice, and the start of a new family. It’s a must read for those of us who have never lived with that fear, saw our entire family wiped out in one day or lived with the after effects of that trauma for the remainder of our lives.

[Alina de Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes since I love tales of survival, but this novella is son bland and terribly written that I actually feel it does a disservice to all the victims of the Rwanda genocide. I was not worth the .90c it cost me. There are so many things wrong with it that I won´t even start. I do wish someone like Kahled Housseini wrote a real book about this.