Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.

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On the surface, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" is a graphic account of the 1994 genocide in which the "Hutu Power" government led its citizens to slaughter 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors in only 100 days ... while the international community stood by and watched helplessly. In a greater sense, however, this is a story about how people imagine the world to be, and the terrible consequences that follow when they lose their humanity in trying to create such a world. It is about the nature of evil, and the power of forgiveness and justice to reclaim the future without forgetting the past.

This is a difficult and painful book to read, but not for the obvious reasons. The atrocities committed by the killers are brought to light in considerable detail, however Gourevitch does this in an almost semi-detached and dispassionate way. His real moral outrage seems to be reserved for the so-called "civilized" countries that could have stopped the genocide, but instead did nothing until it was too late ... and then compounded their foreign policy sins by aiding the Hutu murderers in refugee camps.

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around. Gourevitch provides extensive evidence that there were many warning signs of the impending massacres. He outlines the brief history of ethnic antagonisms that led to the crimes, and explains why the Clinton Administration, the United Nations (including current U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan), and the former colonial powers in Africa (such as France) all refused to intervene to halt the butchery. The French even took steps to keep it going. Gourevitch is particularly good at placing the genocide into a context that shows why our political leaders were too paralyzed to get involved and risk doing anything to save lives. Basically, it seems to come down to the fact that Rwanda has no oil, the victims were black, and the timing was all wrong (U.S. Rangers had just been shot to death and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia only weeks earlier).

Putting aside the official excuses for inaction, though, perhaps the best thing about this book is how Gourevitch tells so much of his tale in the words of the Rwandans themselves--both those accused of condoning or participating in the violence, and those who suffered from it.

From Odette Nyiramilimo, a doctor who had several members of her immediate family killed, to Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who protected 1,000 or more Tutsis from harm by using a mixture of simple bravery and shrewd psychology, the writer has extracted narratives of extraordinary courage under even the most brutal conditions. He struggles not to judge pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the clergyman who ignored his doomed ministers' pleas to be spared the carnage, but cannot conceal his admiration for Rwandese Patriotic Front Major General Paul Kagame, who eloquently said: "People are not inherently bad. But they can be made bad. And they can be taught to be good." Contrasted with the American military intelligence officer who cynically compared the genocide to a cheese sandwich (because nobody cares about either), it is easy to understand why Gourevitch holds Kagame in higher esteem.

"We Wish to Inform You ..." is not a perfect book. As others have noted, it really needs an index (or at least a glossary) to help the reader keep track of the various acronyms of organizations (for example, RPF, FAR, UNAMIR), characters (Major General Romero Dallaire, Rwandan ex-President Habyarimana, and USAID worker Bonaventure Nyibizi) and groups (such as the "interahamwe" Hutu Power militias).

Also, Gourevitch begins to lose his focus on the genocide in the second half of his story. He spends a lot of time and dozens of pages pursuing blind alleys about the misguided humanitarian relief efforts in the nearby Congolese refugee camps, and getting sidetracked with the downfall of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. When the author returns to Rwanda, and explores how the new government there had to struggle to pull the nation together again, he is clearly back on firmer ground. His investigation into the problems faced by survivors of the genocide, being asked to live peacefully alongside their former tormentors, is especially moving.

The mass murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda occurred even more efficiently and ruthlessly than did the Nazi measures to impose a "final solution" on the Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. And yet, for all of the promises that the Western democracies uttered 50 years ago to "never again" permit the attempted extermination of an ethnic group anywhere else, it did ... and very recently, too. The rate at which the Hutus killed the Tutsis was truly sickening, but maybe the way it was allowed to happen should trouble us even more.

As Gourevitch points out in this fine book, which won the coveted George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, the nightmare that gripped Rwanda in April 1994 went largely uncovered by the international press. Americans heard little about it. "We Wish to Inform You ..." may change that. It ranks up there with "Night" by Elie Wiesel and "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer as one of the most disturbing but inspirational tales of human savagery and individual nobility one is ever likely to read. In a self-absorbed pop culture that too often force feeds the public a steady diet of happy talk, "We Wish to Inform You ..." offers a strong dose of perspective, with a sobering reminder that we share this planet with other people who have real problems.

There is always a danger in taking action. There is always a cost in not taking it. Maybe next time, when faced with such a bloodbath, the world will show some of the same simple human decency as those Hutu girls who, when told to separate themselves from the Tutsis, "could have chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans."

36 of 37 found the following review helpful:

In Defense Of This Excellent BookOct 03, 2002
By Luke Filose
Several reviewers have lambasted this book for a variety of shortcomings: poorly written, poorly edited, he doesn't interview the right types of people, he talks too much about himself. I hope to briefly explain why I don't agree with ANY of these criticisms and hope that people will read this excellent book.

Poorly written/edited: I'm a writer/editor myself and the pages of this book flew through my fingers. I was totally absorbed. I found it well written, but if you're worried, I have a feeling the subject matter is so important, you wouldn't even notice if stylistically it wasn't your cup of tea.

Sources: He interviews the following types of people: Hutus who killed, Tutsis who were attacked, government officials of many countries, foreign aid workers. Don't believe the people who say he only interviews the power players and leaves out the voice of the common man. The hotel manager's (just a middle class Hutu who did what he thought was right) story is awesome and could make a movie as powerful as Schindler's List.

Too self-centered: Yes, Gourevitch brings in his own observations and experiences. I felt they were insightful and interesting. Part of his quest is to see how people deal with the genocide, how they internalize it and incorporate it into their existence. As an American going to Rwanda from New York to learn about this genocide, Gourevitch has an interesting perspective and I'm glad he didn't choose to bury it.

One more thing: Several reviews crticized a particular passage where he talks about the "postmodern war" of relativism versus right/wrong. These reviewers misunderstood the passage. He's not talking about the genocide itself, but he's talking about THE WAR OVER THE GENOCIDE. In other words, people who think genocide took place versus those who would deny it or call it something else (it was a war, many people were killed on both sides, etc). In my opinion Gourevitch is right on -- to call this event something other than genocide is either a case of denial or a relativistic fantasy -- nothing is wrong, it's all context. Yes the particular sentence was a little over the top, but these reviewers had a knee-jerk reaction to it that obscured their understanding of his prose.

This is not an objective book, but given the subject how could the author NOT be emotionally moved to make a judgment about people who would deny this event its importance in world history? I applaud his efforts.

29 of 31 found the following review helpful:

Africa my Continent Why?Feb 03, 2000
By Thabo Makhubedu
IN the province of Kibungo, in eastern Rwanda, near the Tanzanian border, there's a rocky hill called Nyarubuye, with a church where many Tutsis were slaughtered in April 1994. A year after the killing, I flew to Nyarubuye in a United Nations helicopter, low over the hills in the morning mists, with the banana trees like green starbursts dense over the slopes. The uncut grass blew back as we dropped into the centre of a parish schoolyard. A lone soldier materialised, and shook our hands with shy formality. I stepped up into the open doorway of a classroom. At least 50, mostly decomposed cadavers covered the floor, wadded in clothing, their belongings strewn about and smashed. Macheted skulls had rolled here and there. The dead looked like pictures of the dead. They did not smell. They did not buzz with flies. They had been killed 13 months earlier, and they hadn't been moved. Skin stuck here and there over the bones, many of which lay scattered from the bodies, dismembered by the killers, or by scavengers - birds, dogs, bugs. The more complete figures looked a lot like people, which they were once. A woman in a cloth wrap printed with flowers lay near the door. Her fleshless hip bones were high and her legs slightly spread, and a child's skeleton extended between them. Her torso was hollowed out. Her ribs and spinal column poked through the rotting cloth. Her head was tipped back and her mouth was open; a strange image - half agony, half repose. I had never been among the dead before. What to do? Look? Yes. I had come to see them. The dead had been left unburied at Nyarubuye for memorial purposes - and there they were, so intimately exposed. I didn't need to see them. I already knew, and believed, what had happened in Rwanda. Yet looking at the buildings and the bodies, and hearing the silence of the place, with the grand Italianate basilica standing there deserted, and the beds of exquisite, death-fertilised flowers blooming over the corpses, it was still strangely unimaginable. All this is common In Africa. But Why? Please buy this book

15 of 15 found the following review helpful:

A great book about genocide, politics and humanityMar 02, 2005
By C. Burch
Henry Kissinger was once asked why he invested so little time on Latin American diplomacy. His response was a sarcastic echo of Hitler's justification for the annexation of Czech Sudetenland: "South America is a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica."

And so it is with Rwanda, relegated to the interior of continent that is a geopolitical second-class citizen. At the same time Americans were building a museum to memorialize the Jewish Holocaust in World War II, our government, along with the U.N. bureaucracy and most of the rest of the world, was washing its hands of the blood in Rwanda.

Here is an exceptional piece of both political reporting and literature that brings light to a dark corner of modern history. If you're thinking about reading this book, I urge you to look at the reviews. Listen to what the readers are saying, the unanimity of feeling. It's so rare to see a review site where not one person trashes a book. And yet this book is so moving and powerful, I think it would take cynicism to the point of inhumanity to deny its impact.

I had read Romeo Dallaire's "Shake Hands with the Devil", which is a harrowing first-person account of the events in Rwanda. Dallaire was the commander of the woefully understaffed U.N. "peacekeeping" force, a force that could do little more than bear witness to the genocide that was unfolding around them. But if you have to read one book about Rwanda, it should be Peter Gourevitch's "We wish to inform you..."

It is not only difficult to put down because of its narrative force, but starting from the personal stories of genocide witnesses he is able to zoom out and see the larger picture in which the rest of the world is complicit. As Gourevitch observes, if what happened in Central Africa happened in Europe, it would have been considered a World War. Why were we so oblivious in the West? Are all men created equal?

To say it's a "must read" book really doesn't do it justice. You're denying yourself something important if you don't read it.

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