We Wish to Inform You...
by Philip Gourevitch
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."
-Josef Stalin

Within the pages of the lumberingly titled "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," author Philip Gourevitch does his best to reveal the profound human tragedy behind the nearly 1 million lives lost in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Like too many other tragedies in the developing world, this event has largely (and tragically) slipped from the memory of the West.

The author tells the story of a premeditated wave of murder on a scale not seen since the killing fields of Cambodia, or the human devastation unleashed during the Holocaust. Gourevitch painstakingly catalogs the events and trends that led up to the bloodbath, which decimated the ethnic Tutsi population of Rwanda in the name of the Hutu majority.

"We Wish to Inform You..." does three important things, and it does them brilliantly, using clear language spoken from a powerfully moral viewpoint.

First, it breaks down the origins of the genocide in clear and understandable terms, incorporating colonial history, internal African politics, and the psychology of hatred and mob violence that lead directly to the murders of 800,000 human beings. Second, it examines the moral stain left upon the Western powers (particularly France and the United States) by the genocide, and, finally, it puts a human face on both the killers and their victims, who were swept away by the savage violence.

Readers will may be both shocked and appalled at the actions of their governments — the United States actively dodged responsibility of any sort, refusing to even utter the word "genocide" in connection with the massive slaughter taking place, while the French government's behavior can only be described as both immoral and criminal. The United Nations is equally culpable; a UN force fed, clothed and cared for thousands of former members of the genocidal regime in refugee camps that served as bases for further terror.

A powerful, cleanly written and intensely moving book, "We Wish to Inform You..." is strongly recommended as a testament to mankind's amazing ability to kill itself, and to the power of individual men, women and children to survive and rebuild their lives.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)