Books from Rwanda

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.

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.

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.