Scholastique Mukasonga

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 into the under-developed Nyamata. In 1973, she was forced to leave the school of social assistance in Butare and flee to Burundi. She settled in France in 1992. The genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda 2 years later. Mukasonga learned that 27 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. Her first novel, Notre-Dame du Nil, won the Ahamadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize in 2012.

Our Lady of the Nile

Imagine being born into a world where everything about you--the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth--designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people. Scholastique Mukasonga's Cockroaches is the story of growing up a Tutsi in Hutu-dominated Rwanda--the story of a happy child, a loving family, all wiped out in the genocide of 1994. A vivid, bitterwsweet depiction of family life and bond in a time of immense hardship, it is also a story of incredible endurance, and the duty to remember that loss and those lost while somehow carrying on. Sweet, funny, wrenching, and deeply moving, Cockroaches is a window onto an unforgettable world of love, grief, and horror.

Cockroaches

"Scholastique Mukasonga's autobiographical stories rend a glorious Rwanda from the obliterating force of recent history, conjuring the noble cows of her home or the dew-swollen grass they graze on. In the title story, five-year-old Colomba tells of a merciless overlord, hunger or igifu, gnawing away at her belly. She searches for sap at the bud of a flower, scraps of sweet potato at the foot of her parent's bed, or a few grains of sorghum in the floor sweepings. Igifu becomes a dizzying hole in her stomach, a plunging abyss into which she falls. In a desperate act of preservation, Colomba's mother gathers enough sorghum to whip up a nourishing porridge, bringing Colomba back to life. This elixir courses through each story, a balm to soothe the pains of those so ferociously fighting for survival"--

Igifu

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A moving, unforgettable tribute to a Tutsi woman who did everything to protect her children from the Rwandan genocide, by the daughter who refuses to let her family's story be forgotten. The story of the author's mother, a fierce, loving woman who for years protected her family from the violence encroaching upon them in pre-genocide Rwanda. Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother's voice in a haunting work of art.

The Barefoot Woman

A new masterwork of satire, lore, and living memory from the leading voice of French-Rwandan literature “Mukasonga breathes upon a vanished world and brings it to life in all its sparkling multifariousness” --J.M. Coetzee In four beautifully woven parts, Mukasonga spins a marvelous recounting of the clash between ancient Rwandan beliefs and the missionaries determined to replace them with European Christianity. When a rogue priest is defrocked for fusing the gospels with the martyrdom of Kibogo, a fierce clash of cults ensues. Swirling with the heady smell of wet earth and flashes of acerbic humor, Mukasonga brings to life the vital mythologies that imbue the Rwandan spirit. In doing so, she gives us a tale of disarming simplicity and profound universal truth. Kibogo’s story is reserved for the evening’s end, when women sit around a fire drinking honeyed brew, when just a few are able to stave off sleep. With heads nodding, drifting into the mist of a dream, one faithful storyteller will weave the old legends of the hillside, stories which church missionaries have done everything in their power to expunge. To some, Kibogo’s tale is founding myth, celestial marvel, magic incantation, bottomless source of hope. To white priests spritzing holy water on shriveled, drought-ridden trees, it looms like red fog over the village: forbidden, satanic, a witchdoctor’s hoax. All debate the twisted roots of this story, but deep down, all secretly wonder – can Kibogo really summon the rain?

Kibogo

Como indivíduos normais transformam-se do dia para a noite em assassinos? Como pais de família, colegas de escola, amigos de infância decidem subitamente agarrar seus facões, seus martelos, suas enxadas e suas lanças e massacrar, num espaço de três meses, mais de 800.000 crianças, mulheres e homens tutsis? Em abril de 1994, Scholastique Mukasonga, já casada e mãe de dois filhos, residia na França. No entanto, ela era uma sobrevivente do genocídio ruandês. Baratas compõe o ciclo testemunhal de sua obra, junto com os romances A mulher de pés descalços e Nossa Senhora do Nilo, ambos publicados pela Editora Nós em 2017. Neste relato autobiográfico em que se associam memória coletiva e individual, Scholastique Mukasonga descreve, de maneira pungente e sem concessões, a emergência, a implementação e as consequências catastróficas da máquina genocidária. Verdadeira arqueologia do terror, Baratas evoca o longo e doloroso processo de aniquilamento do indivíduo: as pequenas humilhações cotidianas, o medo e a política segregacionista de erradicação de uma população submetida à condição de animal a ser destruído. Em suma, a longa agonia dos tutsis em Ruanda sob o olhar indiferente da comunidade internacional. Entre o desejo de preservar os vestígios de um passado em ruínas e a promessa implícita de conservar a história familiar, Baratas se quer escrita de um memória e denúncia da engrenagem de uma barbárie formidável e tristemente moderna.

Baratas

Madonnan vid Nilen

Introducing Scholastique Mukasonga to the UK: a major international author and her brilliant and award-winning first novel.

O romance "A mulher de pés descalços" trata de maneira pungente dos conflitos enfrentados pelas mulheres na Ruanda das lutas fratricidas entre as etnias Tutsi e Hutu, que culminaram com o ominoso genocídio praticado pelos hutus em 1994. Naquele momento, Scholastique Mukasonga, que é da etnia tutsi, já estava radicada na França, e viu à distância sua família ser dizimada. Escritora e ativista da diáspora negra, ela toma para si o chamamento para dar voz à dor e à perda, principalmente de sua mãe Stefania, cuja memória é homenageada em "A mulher de pés descalços".

A mulher de pés descalços

Cette femme aux pieds nus qui donne le titre à mon livre, c'est ma mère, Stefania. Lorsque nous étions enfants, au Rwanda, mes soeurs et moi, maman nous répétait souvent : 3Quand je mourrai, surtout recouvrez mon corps avec mon pagne, personne ne doit voir le corps d'une Mère." Ce livre est le linceul dont je n'ai pu parer ma mère. c'est aussi le devoir de piété filiale de faire revivre, grâce à l'écriture, les travaux et les jours, les traditions ancestrales d'une communauté obstinée à survivre mais qui se sait vouée à une extermination programmée. C'est, au seuil du génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda en 1994, son histoire, c'est notre histoire.

La femme aux pieds nus

nouvelles rwandaises

Ce que murmurent les collines

L’histoire de Julienne est celle d’une destinée d’exil : née en exil au Rwanda, son propre pays, morte au bout de l’exil dans la solitude glacée d’une grande ville d’Europe ; c’est aussi l’histoire d’un amour fou.

Julienne

Mark Polizzotti

Kibogo è salito in cielo

Paulina Chiziane

David Brookshaw

Mia Couto

Cedric Nunn

Imagine Africa and its theme of "Revolution" is introduced by Georges Lory who opens the collection with his essay, "Poets to your quills, Africa is taking off". Through a collage of poems, essays, fiction, and visual art, Imagine Africa gives us a glimpse of a kaleidoscopic contemporary Africa.

Volume 2

Imagine Africa

Il n’y a pas de meilleur lycée que le lycée Notre-Dame du Nil. Il n’y en a pas de plus haut non plus. 2 500 mètres annoncent fièrement les professeurs blancs. 2 493, corrige sœur Lydwine, la professeure de géographie. “On est si près du ciel”, murmure la mère supérieure en joignant les mains. Rwanda, début des années 1970. Au lycée Notre-Dame du Nil, près des sources du grand fleuve égyptien, de jeunes filles en fl eurs se préparent à devenir de bonnes épouses, de bonnes mères, de bonnes chrétiennes. Mais sous le calme apparent couve la haine raciale. Un quota 'ethnique' limite à 10 % le nombre des élèves tutsi, les persécutions se multiplient et voici que s’approchent les nervis du pouvoir... Rescapée du massacre des Tutsi, Scholastique Mukasonga nous offre une œuvre poignante, où des adolescentes aux mains nues tentent d’échapper à une Histoire monstrueuse. Prix Renaudot 2012

Notre-Dame du Nil

Can Xue

PURPLE PERILLA is a cycle of three short stories by avant-garde Chinese writer Can Xue. Moving from an urban center into wilderness, they explore human confrontations with the unknown. The stories stack, like strata, to form an island. One that, to journey through, is to be forced into the subconscious and an entirely contemporary mythos.

Purple Perilla

Uma escola para meninas, situada no alto das montanhas da bacia do Congo e do Nilo, em Ruanda, a 2500 metros de altura e próxima à nascente do grande rio egípcio, aplica rigorosamente um sistema de cotas étnicas que limita a 10% o número de alunas da etnia tutsis. Quando os líderes do poder hutu tomam conta do local, o universo fechado em que têm de viver as alunas torna-se o teatro de lutas políticas e de incitações ao crime racial. Os conflitos são um prelúdio ao massacre ruandês que aconteceria tempos depois. Em Nossa Senhora do Nilo, Scholastique Mukasonga, sobrevivente do massacre, conta as experiências-limites pelas quais passaram as jovens do colégio, numa narrativa pungente que encantou o mundo.

Nossa senhora do Nilo

À Nyamata, nous avions depuis longtemps accepté que notre délivrance soit la mort. Nous avions vécu dans son attente, toujours aux aguets de son approche, inventant et réinventant malgré tout des moyens d’y échapper. Jusqu’à la prochaine fois où elle serait plus proche encore, où elle emporterait des voisins, des camarades de classe, des frères, un fils. Et les mères tremblaient d’angoisse en mettant au monde un garçon qui deviendrait un Inyenzi qu’il serait loisible d’humilier, de traquer, d’assassiner en toute impunité. En retraçant son histoire, Scholastique Mukasonga dresse un tombeau de papier aux victimes tutsi de la haine raciale. Le témoignage essentiel d’une rescapée sur quarante ans de persécutions au Rwanda.

Inyenzi ou les Cafards

A sharp and playful critique of colonialism from the leading voice of French-Rwandan literature, animated by memories, archival specters, and powerful women “In sentences of great beauty and restraint, Mukasonga rescues a million souls from the collective noun ‘genocide,’ returning them to us as individual human beings.” — Zadie Smith In a 4-part narrative brimming with historical asides, alluring anecdotes, and murky questions left in the margins of colonial records, Sister Deborah heralds “a life that is more alive” as it explores the tensions and myths of Rwanda’s past. When time-worn ancestral remedies fail to heal young Ikirezi’s maladies, she’s rushed to the Rwandan hillsides. From her termite perch under the coral tree, health blooms under Sister Deborah’s hands. Women bear their breasts to the rising sun as men under thatched roofs stand, “stunned and impotent before this female fury.” Now grown, Ikirezi unearths the truth of Sister Deborah’s passage from America to 1930s Rwanda and the mystery surrounding her sudden departure. In colonial records, Sister Deborah is a “pathogen,” an “incident.” Who is the keeper of truth, Ikirezi impels us to ask, Who stands at the threshold of memory? Did we dance? Did she heal? Did we look to the sky with wonder? Ikirezi writes on, pulling Sister Deborah out from the archive, inscribing her with breath. A beautiful novel that works in the slippages of history, Sister Deborah at its core is a story of what happens when women — black women and girls — seek the truth by any means.

Scholastique Mukasonga

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