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Philip Gourevitch

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch is a powerful and haunting exploration of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus over the course of approximately 100 days. Gourevitch, a journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker, provides a deeply reported and deeply personal account of the events leading up to the genocide, the atrocities committed during it, and the aftermath that continues to reverberate throughout the world today. The book is divided into three parts, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the genocide. The first part provides a historical and political context for the violence, exploring the long-standing tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu groups and the role of colonialism in exacerbating those tensions. The second part offers a series of vivid and harrowing portraits of individual Rwandans who lived through the genocide, including survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders. The third part examines the international community's response to the genocide, highlighting the failures of diplomacy, military intervention, and humanitarian aid. Throughout the book, Gourevitch grapples with the question of how such a horrific event could have occurred, and why the world stood by and allowed it to happen. He offers no easy answers, but he does provide a nuanced and compassionate account of the complex factors that contributed to the genocide, and the ongoing challenges of reconciliation and justice in its aftermath. "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" is a masterful work of journalism and a testament to the power of storytelling to bear witness to the worst of human atrocities. It is a book that will leave readers grappling with the darkness of the human soul, but also with the hope and resilience of those who survived. As Gourevitch writes in the book's introduction, "This is not a story of good and evil, but of ordinary people caught up in the tide of history, and of the consequences of their actions."."."