This extraordinary book is about what happened when the Rwandan government in 1994 implemented a policy that called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the massacres were low-tech - done largely by machete - they were carried out at dazzling speed, and 800 000 people were killed in a hundred days. Pastors in one Tutsi community sent a letter to their church president, a Hutu, that included the chilling phrase that gives Philip Gourevitch his title.
This haunting work is not only an anatomy of this genocide and what Rwandans call its "genocidal logic", but also a vivid history of the background to the tragedy and an unforgettable account of the aftermath. It shows how resurgent genocidal forces threatened to plunge central Africa into total war. Lastly, he contrasts the Rwandans' provocatively original political response to the horror with the wholly inadequate reactions of international humanitarian organizations and foreign governments.
