All Your Children, Scattered

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Three generations of a family torn apart by the Tutsi genocide try to reconnect with their homeland and each other." * The New York Times * "Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is a writer of immense gifts and her novel has moved me to my core. Read it and meet and purveyor of human truths that are timeless, vivid and utterly essential." * Fergal Keane, author of The Madness * "Precise and poetic; profound and profoundly human, All Your Children, Scattered plumbs the depths of history's silences, and of its victims." * Jakuta Alikavazovic, author of Night as it Falls * "Beata Umbubyeyi Mairesse writes in beautiful language of, often, terrible things, which is precisely what gives All Your Children, Scattered so much of its power. War has a long tail, and its impact does not end when the fighting is over. The world of Blanche, Immaculata and Stokley pulls you in and spins you around. Deftly told and beautifully written, this is a story that kept me engrossed to the end." * Aminatta Forna, author of Happiness * "Beautifully wrought and utterly compelling." * Lisa Appignanesi * "This book touched me as it affirms a great faith in literature: that what we think we can no longer say, we can attempt to write. Between silence and the quest for new words, one must find a language: Beata's is true without being coarse, reserved without hiding details of the events and the emotions they arouse." * Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Prix Goncourt winner * "This story tells all our stories." * Gael Faye, author of Small Country * "[All Your Children, Scattered] tenderly unfurls the pain of generations, without flinching from the complex legacy of colonization and war. " * Booklist * "This first novel has the feel of a breakthrough, a transcendence." * The Brooklyn Rail * "A brief but powerful novel about the weight of silence and the intergenerational nature of trauma, and despite the weight of its subject matter, there is a light at its center. In opening up these various narratives, Mairesse's work acts as a reminder that even if the past cannot be restored, silence does not have the last word." * Asymptote Journal * "A dazzling rainbow." * Jeune Afrique * "Splendid." * ELLE (France) * "Magnificent." * Le Monde * "A poetic account of the strength of women." * Cheek Magazine * "Viscerally powerful." * Financial Times * "Searing... a poignant meditation on the violence that ruptured so many lives. Mairesse's lyrical prose, translated by Alison Anderson, is mesmerising."


* The Observer * "Silence, muteness, buried pain, the guarding of long-held secrets, obfuscation and the disinclination to discuss traumatic experience - all inflect this lyrical, subtle narrative, which takes a sideways approach to "the shipwreck of a nation" in Rwanda after the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994. Focusing on female perspectives, All Your Children, Scattered ripples outwards from this central catastrophe, moving back and forth in time; Mairesse explores family matters with great specificity, while never diminishing the scale of the tragedy." * TLS * "Clear-eyed, rich prose..... a book of deep sorrow and profound dignity, a commentary both on the violent legacy of colonisation and the pitilessness of human nature." * Irish Times *