A Sunday At The Pool In Kigali

Reviews / Votes

Courtemanche is a French-Canadian journalist and film-maker specialising in Third-World politics and the impact of AIDS upon Africa. Set in Rwanda in 1994, his novel is an attempt to portray and come to terms with both the terrible social fault-lines which led to the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus - and with the plague-like spread of a disease, AIDS, which recognizes no social or political boundaries. Courte-manche's main protagonist is a white documentary film-maker who falls in love with a young Tutsi woman. This relationship becomes the vehicle for the author's impressive intertwining of the personal and the political. It's a nightmarish, uncompromising and disturbing read, underpinned by an imperative to tell things as they were (and are), however hideous, but also to seek for some redeeming human quality. A very powerful debut, ably translated from the French by Patricia Claxton.