Scholastique Mukasonga

About

Scholastique Mukasonga (born in 1956) is a Rwandan novelist and memoirist who lives in France. Born in southern Rwanda, she experienced ethnic persecution from childhood. In 1960, her Tutsi family was forcibly displaced to the Bugesera region, and she later fled to Burundi before settling in France in 1992. Two years later, the Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of 37 members of her family, including her mother. Writing became a way to preserve their memories and recover the cultural world that violence had threatened to destroy. Her first book, Inyenzi ou les Cafards (2006), is a memoir of her childhood and the persecution of the Tutsi. Her acclaimed novel Our Lady of the Nile won France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2012. Her other notable works include The Barefoot Woman and Kibogo. Through fiction, memoir, and folklore, Mukasonga explores memory, displacement, cultural identity, and resilience.

Books on TheBookRoads

All genres Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Memoir

All themes Identity & Belonging Freedom & Resistance Spirituality & Faith Colonialism

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Murmurs from the Hills: Rwandan Tales

Before Rwanda became synonymous with tragedy, its hills held centuries of stories, traditions, and ancestral wisdom. In this evocative collection, Scholastique Mukasonga reaches back into her homeland’s cultural memory, weaving together Rwandan folklore, family recollections, mythology, and the history of colonialism. Rivers carry the echoes of childhood, sacred objects preserve the stories of generations, and the voices of elders bring forgotten worlds back to life. Through tales of kings, village communities, spiritual beliefs, and encounters between African traditions and European influence, Mukasonga creates a rich portrait of a society struggling to preserve its identity amid profound change. The stories move between the intimate and the legendary, revealing how collective memory shapes a people’s understanding of themselves. Both a celebration of Rwanda’s cultural heritage and a meditation on the power of storytelling, this collection seeks to recover a world that history threatened to erase.

2026 Rwanda

Our Lady of the Nile

High in the mountains of Rwanda, an elite Catholic boarding school for girls stands isolated above the Nile, promising its students education, respectability, and protection from the outside world. But beneath its orderly routines, the school reflects the growing ethnic tensions and prejudices shaping Rwandan society in the years before the 1994 genocide. Admission quotas restrict the number of Tutsi students, leaving girls such as Veronica and Virginia vulnerable to discrimination and hostility from their Hutu classmates. As Gloriosa, the daughter of a powerful politician, spreads increasingly dangerous nationalist ideas, friendships fracture and everyday rivalries become entangled with political violence. The school, overseen by Belgian nuns, becomes a microcosm of a society moving toward catastrophe. Through the experiences of its teenage students, Scholastique Mukasonga explores how prejudice is taught, how colonial legacies shape identity, and how violence can take root in ordinary life long before it erupts into tragedy.

2012 Rwanda

Country

Rwanda

Africa