Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey

Most people that read this book will have an active interest in Rwanda: they've been there, are going there or are interested in the country for some other reason. There are many fantastic books that record the history and sequence of events of the 1994 tragedy that is still so formative to Rwanda's daily events, (I've just finished researching drug use in Rwanda).
However, this book gives 'outsiders' a chance to find out what it was like as 'an outsider' s the genocide came to an end. This isn't a dispassionate academic review, it is a personal, moving account. To start to understand something like the genocide, you need both the dispassionate and the personal, and this is a great book to start with.

An excellent book (1/1 people found this helpful)

I've read several disparaging remarks about Fergal Keane, the author, and his works as a journalist and presenter. People have called him arrogant and narcissistic but I beg to differ. Keane's account of travelling through a country ungoing genocide and war; his visits to a UN refugee camp in Tanzania and their journey through Burundi to get to government-held areas in the South of Rwanada is written with honesty, sensitivity and insight. Far from "narcissistic", Keane asks questions of everyone around him and gives a fair amount of insight into the lives of the RPF soldier, Frank Ndore, who escorts them for much of their journey and the Ugandan drivers who risk everything to take them on their journeys. He also asks a fair amount of questions of Interahamwe and government soldiers, giving us a glimpse of their reasoning and the ways in which the evil was perpetuated.

This is the fourth book Ihave read on Rwanda and I have a fifth lined up already. I would start with Left To Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza or An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina but I would definitely say this is an important book to read.

read this (1/1 people found this helpful)

Seaon of blood is an essential read for anyone interested in the madness that engulfed Rwanda in 1994. I have read many books on the subject but would recommend this one above all of the others apart from Shake Hands with the Devil.The depair that the author and his colleagues felt as they travelled oozes out from every page, I had to stop reading after every chapter and just simply pause to gather my thoughts. The part in which he describes meeting a woman, a baby a small child and three men moved me to tears as it was described how they had helped each other to survive particulary when I learnt that the small child clinging to the womans legs was not her child but one that she had protected along with her own baby.The inaction of the West and the actions of the Fench are beyond description. Just pray to whoever you pray to that it never happens again.

Life is fragile (1/1 people found this helpful)

This is a powerful and disturbing book; it is so much more than a description of a terrible episode in human history. The book traces some of the history of the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi and the fact that this was not the first period of ethnic cleansing. The role of the Belgians in using the Tutsi's as an elite was also placed in context, as was the abject failure of the UN to act in anything like a timely or sufficient manner.

However, in the end it was the sheer capacity for brutality against neighbours, based on a simple classification of ethnicity that was most troubling. The mass violence and the specific desire to wipe out a generation of Tutsi children were sickening. The people of Nyanrubuye parish are the subject of the dedication in this book and the account of the murders there will remain in my memory. However, overall I found the most frightening was the illustration of just how fragile life is when faced by a drunken or drugged teenager with a semi-automatic weapon and a crude imprinted message in his brain to wipe out the "cockroaches". In one simple act, lives are ruined across generations. Not a comfortable book but one that should be read if only to inspire its readers to stand against prejudice wherever it is encountered.

this book gives you a conscience (6/8 people found this helpful)

This book is like a dose of chemotherapy through the veins. A sharp awakening that we in the west are pretty much oblivious to the atrocity going on across the other side of the world. Yes i saw the news reels at the time. A bunch of pictures of what looked like mad men in the heat wielding machetes jumping on cars, like some mad excessive sick carnival. But the coverage was short lived and never gave a full picture of the politics of rwanda that lead to these events. It did come across as some inter tribal warfare. This book however gives you the lead up the history it does not simplify it into merely graphic descriptions of killing and ethnic hatred. The descriptions of the scenes of atrocity are moving but unsentimalised. The book is real and down to earth and therefore makes the events speak for themselves and us more able to comprehend the surrealness of the genocide. You really feel warmth towards the people he met and helped him on his journey. This writer understands about human charchter. This is not a journalist eager to show off about heroic news stories in rwanda. But someone who knew a story needed to be told. This book gives you a conscience about Africa and a desire to learn more.

Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey

Fergal Keane

Reader Reviews:

An important perspective (1/1 people found this helpful)

An excellent book (1/1 people found this helpful)

read this (1/1 people found this helpful)

Life is fragile (1/1 people found this helpful)

this book gives you a conscience (6/8 people found this helpful)

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