Scholastique Mukasonga

Rwanda

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

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

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Murmurs from the Hills: Rwandan Tales

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.

Igifu

In this haunting collection of autobiographical stories, Scholastique Mukasonga brings to life a Rwanda shaped by exile, hunger, persecution, and the enduring wounds of genocide. Through vivid memories of childhood and the traditions of the Tutsi community, she evokes a world of cattle, family rituals, rural landscapes, and fragile moments of happiness threatened by violence. In the title story, a five-year-old girl named Colomba struggles with igifu—a relentless, almost living hunger that consumes her body and imagination. Other stories explore the dignity of cattle-herding traditions, the fear that shadows children growing up amid ethnic persecution, and the devastating consequences of being a Tutsi woman in a society marked by prejudice. Yet this is not simply a book about suffering. With tenderness and remarkable clarity, Mukasonga preserves the humanity of those who were lost, ensuring that their lives, customs, and memories survive alongside the history of their tragedy.

Cockroaches

In this moving autobiographical memoir, Scholastique Mukasonga recounts her childhood as a Tutsi girl in Rwanda, where ethnic persecution gradually transforms everyday life into a struggle for survival. After her family is forcibly displaced to the impoverished Bugesera region, she grows up surrounded by fear, humiliation, and uncertainty, yet also by the warmth of family life and the strength of her community. Eventually forced to flee to neighbouring Burundi, Mukasonga leaves behind the people and places that shaped her childhood. In 1994, while living in France, she learns that thirty-seven members of her family have been murdered during the Rwandan genocide. The title refers to inyenzi, a dehumanising slur used against Tutsis, reducing human beings to creatures considered fit for extermination. Through precise, restrained prose, Mukasonga transforms her memories into an act of remembrance, restoring individuality to those whom violence sought to erase. Cockroaches is both a personal testimony of survival and a powerful tribute to the enduring bonds of family, memory, and belonging.

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