Left to Tell: One Woman's Story of Surviving the Rwanden Holocaust

What an amazing book!

Or maybe it is just an amazing story, the hideous inhumanity that prejudice can drive us to coupled by incredible forgiveness. I read the whole book in 24 hours straight - something that I haven't done in years.

Immaculee is from a loving, respected Catholic family in a small town in the west of Rwanda. A family who believed your tribal background shouldn't matter in a country where history and particularly Belgian colonial rule had made it of paramount importance.

It is the story of her childhood and adolescence in Rwanda before the unbelievable genocide that was encouraged by the government and allowed to run unchecked by the rest of the world. It is Immaculee's story of God's love, strength and revelation to her in situations that none of us ever want to imagine, the brutal murder of family and friends by their own friends and neighbours and yet it is not an overtly religious book.

Although in a part of the world of which I have no experience it was so easy to imagine all the people as real people that you could know and that is as it is, they are or were real people.

I cried (5/6 people found this helpful)

I havent read a book that made me cry for ages.

The general story is about the Rwanden holocaust. How Immaculee's neighbors and friends turned against them, how their goverment turned against them, how their country turned against them. only because they were born tutsi. About half of the story is dedicated to Immaculee growing up in a country she loved, she didnt even know her tribe untill she enterd second shool. She was mostly unnaware of the political situation deterioating untill the war actually started. She was in uni by that time and her father had just asked her to return home When she did return home the holocaist started and her small village was in turmoil, the family was split up. She was hidden in a small cramped bathroom with 6 or 7 other women for about 9 weeks listening to the radios blurt out lies, and best friends deny liking them and accuse her family of trying to kill them and all the other hutus in the area. God was Immaculees savior. that is probally the moral of the book (if there is 1 bar dont dicriminate) that god is all power full and we must learn to love him and his other children, no matter what evil posses them, we must learn to forgive. The oral isnt forced upon you but you know its there, the style of writing is very good. I give it FOUR STARS
Over 1 million people died in the Rwanden holocaust, and to think that it so long for the western world what happend!!

read it its ace (in a sad way)

ps. very religous, but in a good way. It shows how diffrent people cope with tragdys.

thanks hope this helped
:D

Left to Tell: One Woman's Story of Surviving the Rwanden Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza

Reader Reviews:

Anyone reading this will surely cry (3/3 people found this helpful)

I cried (5/6 people found this helpful)

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