Jean Hatzfeld
Books by Jean Hatzfeld
The Antelope's Strategy
by Jean Hatzfeld
It’s a beautiful book, it’s a book that’s incredibly deep. It’s about death, it also tells you something very shocking, which is that ultimately this process of reintegration is really not hard at all on the killers.
The Strategy Of Antelopes
by Jean Hatzfeld
"It is easy to write movingly about victims, but it is more interesting and more important, if we want to stop it happening again, to talk to the perpetrators. This is about going back to a village, Nyamata, and talking to the people, both victims and perpetrators, now living there together. This is a searing, poignant and very poetic book. All the voices come across so strongly and you realise that there is cohabitation but no reconciliation."
Into the Quick of Life
by Jean Hatzfeld
The first book he wrote took a kind of a hybrid form – a mixture of oral history and personal reflection – and it was based on the stories of a group of survivors who had spent the 100 days or so of the genocide hiding in these dense papyrus swamps near their home. They were being hunted there by a gang of killers from around their village, people whom they knew. What makes this a great book is not just its subject matter, but its style and its voice. Hatzfeld is obviously someone who spent a huge amount of time just hanging out in the village, in the bars, in the backyards, in the fields, with people who had had this experience – and he relates their stories with unmediated immediacy, and with great soul.
This book is the first in a three part series. See also: Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak and The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide
Machete Season
by Jean Hatzfeld
Hatzfeld wound up going back to Rwanda and the whole group of killers who had been pursuing the survivors he’d been writing about in his first book were all in one prison nearby. And he arranged to meet with them on a regular basis, individually and collectively, to hear their stories. And it’s the most direct (I guess you could say honest) account, by people who took part in the genocide, of the excitement and thrill of the hunt and the kill that motivated a lot of them.
Life Laid Bare
by Jean Hatzfeld
It’s a beautiful book, a book that’s incredibly deep. It also tells you something very shocking, which is that ultimately this process of reintegration is really not hard at all on the killers.
Interviews where books by Jean Hatzfeld were recommended
The best books on The Rwandan Genocide, recommended by Philip Gourevitch
Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, an account of the Rwandan genocide, explores five books on the events that left 800,000 dead in 100 days.
The best books on Africa, recommended by Michela Wrong
Long-time foreign correspondent Michela Wrong, the author of books on Zaire, Eritrea, Kenya and Rwanda, tells us where to turn for engaging foreign perspectives on Africa. She recommends five of her favourite books on Africa, by anthropologists, journalists and one US president.
