Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak

During the spring of 1994, in a tiny country called Rwanda, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors in a gruesome civil war. Several years later, journalist Jean Hatzfeld traveled to Rwanda to interview ten participants in the killings, eliciting extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they perpetrated. As Susan Sontag wrote in the preface, Machete Season is a document that "everyone should read . . . [because making] the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda . . . is part of being a moral adult."

Machete Season

History

Hatzfeld, Jean

Africa

Picador

The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide

One hot May morning in 2003, a crowd of Hutus who had participated in the genocidal killings of April 1994 in Rwanda filed out of prison and into the sunshine, singing hallelujahs, their freedom granted by presidential pardon. As they returned to their old villages, Tutsi survivors watched as the people who had killed their neighbors and families returned to the homes around them. In The Antelope's Strategy, Jean Hatzfeld returns to Rwanda to talk with both Hutus and Tutsis struggling to live side by side. We hear the voices of killers who have been released from prison or returned from exile, and Tutsi escapees who must now tolerate them as neighbors. How are they managing with the process of reconciliation? Is such a thing even possible? The enormously varied answers Hatzfeld gets suggest that little faith in true recovery survives among those who lived through the genocide. This is an astonishing exploration of the pain of memory, the nature of stoic hope, and the ineradicability of grief.

A powerful report on the aftereffects of the genocide in Rwanda—and on the near impossibility of reconciliation between survivors and killers 
In two acclaimed previous works, the noted French journalist Jean Hatzfeld offered a profound, harrowing witness to the unimaginable pain and horror in the mass killings of one group of people by another. Combining his own analysis of the events with interviews from both the Hutu killers who carried out acts of unimaginable depravity and the Tutsi survivors who somehow managed to escape, in one, based mostly on interviews with Tutsi survivors, he explored in unprecedented depth the witnesses’ understanding of the psychology of evil and their courage in survival; in the second, he probed further, in talks with a group of Hutu killers about their acts of unimaginable depravity.
Now, in The Antelope’s Strategy, he returns to Rwanda seven years later to talk with both the Hutus and Tutsis he’d come to know—some of the killers who had been released from prison or returned from Congolese exile, and the Tutsi escapees who must now tolerate them as neighbors. How are they managing with the process of reconciliation? Do you think in their hearts it is possible? The enormously varied and always surprising answers he gets suggest that the political ramifications of the international community’s efforts to insist on resolution after these murderous episodes are incalculable. This is an astonishing exploration of the pain of memory, the nature of stoic hope, and the ineradicability of grief.

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The continuation of a groundbreaking study of the Rwandan genocide, and the story of the survivor generation
In Rwanda from April to June 1994, 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in the largest and swiftest genocide since World War II. In his previous books, Jean Hatzfeld has documented the lives of the killers and victims, but after twenty years he has found that the enormity of understanding doesn’t stop with one generation. In Blood Papa, Hatzfeld returns to the hills and marshes of Nyamata to ask what has become of the children―those who never saw the machetes yet have grown up in the shadow of tragedy.
Fabrice, Sandra, Jean-Pierre, and others share the genocide as a common inheritance. Some have known only their parents’ silence and lies, enduring the harassment of classmates or the stigma of a father jailed for unspeakable crimes. Others have enjoyed a loving home and the sympathies offered to survivor children, but do so without parents or an extended family. 
The young Rwandans in Blood Papa see each other in the neighborhood―they dance and gossip, frequent the same cafés, and, like teenagers everywhere, love sports, music, and fashion; they surf the Web and dream of marriage. Yet Hutu and Tutsi children rarely speak of the ghosts that haunt their lives. Here their moving first-person accounts combined with Hatzfeld’s arresting chronicles of everyday life form a testament to survival in a country devastated by the terrible crimes and trauma of the past.

Blood Papa: Rwanda's New Generation

In April-May 1994, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by their Hutu fellow citizens--about 10,000 a day, mostly being hacked to death by machete. In Machete Season, the veteran foreign correspondent Jean Hatzfeld reports on the results of his interviews with nine of the Hutu killers. They were all friends who came from a single region where they helped to kill 50,000 out of their 59,000 Tutsi neighbors, and all of them are now in prison, some awaiting execution. It is usually presumed that killers will not tell the truth about their brutal actions, but Hatzfeld elicited extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they had perpetrated. He rightly sees that their account raises as many questions as it answers. Adabert, Alphonse, Ignace, and the others (most of them farmers) told Hatzfeld how the work was given to them, what they thought about it, how they did it, and what their responses were to the bloodbath. "Killing is easier than farming," one says. "I got into it, no problem," says another. Each describes what it was like the first time he killed someone, what he felt like when he killed a mother and child, how he reacted when he killed a cordial acquaintance, how 'cutting' a person with a machete differed from 'cutting' a calf or a sugarcane. And they had plenty of time to tell Hatzfeld, too, about whether and why they had reconsidered their motives, their moral responsibility, their guilt, remorse, or indifference to the crimes. Hatzfeld's meditation on the banal, horrific testimony of the genocidaires and what it means is lucid, humane, and wise: he relates the Rwanda horror to war crimes and to other genocidal episodes in human history. Especially since the Holocaust, it has been conventional to presume that only depraved and monstrous evil incarnate could perpetrate such crimes, but it may be, he suggests, that such actions are within the realm of ordinary human conduct. To read this disturbing, enlightening and very brave book is to consider in a new light the foundation of human morality and ethics.

A lucid, readable history of Greece and Greek culture from the earliest Aegean civilization to the Roman Conquest.
This excellent introduction traces Greek history from the pre-Hellenes up to the Roman Conquest and the end of the Greek states. Broad-ranging in approach, the book outlines major patterns of development and decline in economic, political, religious, social, intellectual, and cultural life at home and in the colonies.

History of Ancient Greece

Ancient Civilizations

W.W.Norton&Company

The continuation of a groundbreaking study of the Rwandan genocide, and the story of the survivor generation\nIn Rwanda from April to June 1994, 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in the largest and swiftest genocide since World War II. In his previous books, Jean Hatzfeld has documented the lives of the killers and victims, but after twenty years he has found that the enormity of understanding doesn’t stop with one generation. In Blood Papa, Hatzfeld returns to the hills and marshes of Nyamata to ask what has become of the children―those who never saw the machetes yet have grown up in the shadow of tragedy.\nFabrice, Sandra, Jean-Pierre, and others share the genocide as a common inheritance. Some have known only their parents’ silence and lies, enduring the harassment of classmates or the stigma of a father jailed for unspeakable crimes. Others have enjoyed a loving home and the sympathies offered to survivor children, but do so without parents or an extended family.\nThe young Rwandans in Blood Papa see each other in the neighborhood―they dance and gossip, frequent the same cafés, and, like teenagers everywhere, love sports, music, and fashion; they surf the Web and dream of marriage. Yet Hutu and Tutsi children rarely speak of the ghosts that haunt their lives. Here their moving first-person accounts combined with Hatzfeld’s arresting chronicles of everyday life form a testament to survival in a country devastated by the terrible crimes and trauma of the past.

"To make the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is a painful task that we have no right to shirk–it is part of being a moral adult." –Susan Sontag In the late 1990s, French author and journalist Jean Hatzfeld made several journeys into the hilly, marshy region of the Bugesera, one of the areas most devastated by the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, where an average of five out of six Tutsis were hacked to death with machete and spear by their Hutu neighbors and militiamen. In the villages of Nyamata and N'tarama, Hatzfeld interviewed fourteen survivors of the genocide, from orphan teenage farmers to the local social worker. For years the survivors had lived in a muteness as enigmatic as the silence of those who survived the Nazi concentration camps. In Life Laid Bare, they speak for those who are no longer alive to speak for themselves; they tell of the deaths of family and friends in the churches and marshes to which they fled, and they attempt to account for the reasons behind the Tutsi extermination. For many of the survivors "life has broken down," while for others, it has "stopped," and still others say that it "absolutely must go on." These horrific accounts of life at the very edge contrast with Hatzfeld's own sensitive and vivid descriptions of Rwanda's villages and countryside in peacetime. These voices of courage and resilience exemplify the indomitable human spirit, and they remind us of our own moral responsibility to bear witness to these atrocities and to never forget what can come to pass again. Winner of the Prix France Culture and the Prix Pierre Mille, Life Laid Bare allows us, in the author's own words, "to draw as close as we can get to the Rwandan genocide."

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

Other Press

Strategy of Antelopes

Serpent's Tail

In April-May 1994, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by their Hutu fellow citizens - about 10,000 a day, mostly being hacked to death by machete. Jean Hatzfeld reports on the results of his interviews with nine of the Hutu killers, all of whom are now in prison, some awaiting execution. Hatzfeld elicits extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they perpetrated. Each describes what it was like the first time he killed someone, what he felt like when he killed a mother and child, and how he reacted when he killed a cordial acquaintance. Each reflects on his feelings of moral responsibility, his guilt, remorse, or indifference to the crimes. Especially since the Holocaust, it has been conventional to presume that only depraved and monstrous evil incarnate could perpetrate such crimes, but it may be, Hatzfeld suggests, that such actions are within the realm of ordinary human conduct. To read this disturbing, enlightening and very brave book is to consider in a new light the foundation of human morality and ethics.

A Time for MacHetes : The Rwandan Genocide - The Killers Speak

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hatzfeld, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hatzfeld, Jean

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hatzfeld, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Machete Season

The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide

The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide

Blood Papa: Rwanda's New Generation

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak

History of Ancient Greece

Blood Papa: Rwanda's New Generation

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

Strategy of Antelopes

A Time for MacHetes : The Rwandan Genocide - The Killers Speak