Somewhere in a War-Torn Country…

Every now and then, I make a point of reading books that remind me of how ugly humanity can be. I am most grateful that neither terror, nor war, nor utter loss, have as of yet crossed my path. At thirty years old, I’ve never even seen a real-life gun. That is lucky. Millions upon millions of people aren’t so fortunate, and such a fact should never be forgotten. Violence is ubiquitous and innate, and we are unable to prevent it from recurring. Today’s reading selections, although both fiction, serve as brutal reminders of what can happen when it goes unchecked.

Uzodinma Iweala’s first novel, Beasts of No Nation, takes place in an unnamed West African country torn by civil war. The narrator is a young lad whose father is killed and who gets picked up by militants who turn him into a soldier. At first he fondly flashes back to his previously peaceful existence; his love of books and family, and his desire to go to university. After he takes his first life with a machete at the behest of his commander, he turns into a killer and things fall apart. He can never go back.

Language is what makes this book so remarkable. Rather than simply reading text, we hear the voice of the speaker, in the words and accent he’d use were he telling this tale in person. It makes everything he says more powerful and disturbing, since we witness first-hand his innocence falling away.

Gil Courtemanche’s Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali (A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali) has a similar sense of brewing tension and terror. The protagonist is a Canadian journalist named Bernard, stationed in Rwanda to get a television service off the ground. He falls in love with a local named Gentille, but they are doomed by circumstance to not be together. Compared to what is taking place all around them, the loss is seemingly anticlimactic.

Although the 1994 mass slaughter of Tutsis takes place in the novel, the focus of the text is on sex rather than genocide: desire, the AIDS epidemic sweeping the country, prostitution, and vicious rape, among other things. This book is distressing, but excellent nonetheless. As readers, it is good - even necessary - to step out of our comfort zones once in a while.

I won’t be posting until next weekend, as I'll be in Boston for the Public Library Association Conference. When I return, you have my word that I’ll discuss lighter books.