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33+ Works 4,982 Members 91 Reviews 1 Favorited

About the Author

Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at "The New Yorker", lives in New York City. His last book, "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" (FSG, 1998), won the National Book Critics Circle & Los Angeles Times Book Awards. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Credit: Larry D. Moore, Texas Book Festival, Austin, TX, Nov. 1, 2008

Works by Philip Gourevitch

The Paris Review Interviews I (2006) — Editor — 541 copies, 8 reviews
The Paris Review Interviews II (2014) — Editor — 312 copies, 3 reviews
Standard Operating Procedure (2008) 232 copies, 4 reviews
A Cold Case (2001) 200 copies, 8 reviews
The Paris Review 175 2005 Fall-Winter (2019) — Editor — 14 copies
The Paris Review 182 2007 Fall (2007) — Editor — 12 copies
The Paris Review 186 2008 Fall (2008) 10 copies, 1 review
The Paris Review 191 2009 Winter (2010) 6 copies, 1 review
The Paris Review 185 2008 Summer (2008) — Editor — 5 copies
The Paris Review 190 2009 Fall (2009) — Editor — 5 copies

Associated Works

Dusk and Other Stories (1988) — Introduction, some editions — 422 copies, 12 reviews
Granta 87: Jubilee! The 25th Anniversary Issue (2004) — Contributor — 206 copies
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Contributor — 121 copies, 3 reviews
Granta 50: Fifty (1995) — Contributor — 118 copies, 1 review
It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art (2018) — Contributor — 76 copies, 1 review
The Best American Political Writing 2004 (2004) — Contributor — 41 copies, 1 review

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

 
Flagged
Castinet | 64 other reviews | Dec 11, 2022 |
Amazing book teaching the reader what really happened in the Rwanda genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus. Some a-hole white guy made the mistake of saying that Tutsis were more aristocratic than the Hutus (Hamitic myth). Hutus were pissed off about the fact that Tutsis belonged to the ruling class so with help from France (Mitterand), Hutus all over this small country hacked, bludgeoned and shot to death all the Tutsis they could find, in 1994. This horrible event was ignored by the international community and when Tutsi refugees tried to flee, Hutus went with them to refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania. They knew that aid workers wouldn't know which were which, so they, along with the French and Belgium soldiers, took all the food and policed the refugee camps themselves. So, when some humanitarian organization asks you to"feed the hungry," just remember to whom your dollars will go. (Moreover, at least 75¢ out of$1 will go to overhead).
The genocide of Tutsis continued for years and years, and this struggling little nation has had to do all the work of rebuilding their home and trying to bring the genocidaires to justice without any help from the major powers who blocked their efforts every step of the way.
Gourevitch spent years researching his book. I thank the author for making me aware of a genocide that I (shockingly) just became aware of. No wonder the world hates us.
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Flagged
burritapal | 64 other reviews | Oct 23, 2022 |
An incredible recounting of the Rwandan genocide that sheds a lot of light across the atrocity of the different players and motivations involved. It is harrowing and chilling but also incredibly well written. Well worth the read whether you are interested in Rwandan history or not.
 
Flagged
renbedell | 64 other reviews | Feb 6, 2022 |
Holy critter. I started this book knowing the Rwandan genocide was basically composed of Hutus killing Tutsis in the mid-1990s, and ended it with a radically transformed mindset toward so many institutions and people and ideas. Chief among them is the UN and the international community as a whole, who are perhaps the most responsible, I think, for ignoring the genocide and facilitating the massacres that followed it.

The book itself was easy to read, surprisingly, since it dealt with some of the most unfathomable human situations to have transpired in recent history. My only problem with Gourevitch is that he never really got to the red-hot human center of the Rwandan genocide: How were so many of the Hutus so completely inhuman? How could they have done what they did? It's true that he explains the history leading up to the genocide, but he never really investigates the thought processes that guided the Hutus in their rampage. Because of that, I felt like he cheated us out of a 100% complete understanding of the conflict.

Overall, however, this book was one of the most illuminating I have ever read.
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Gadi_Cohen | 64 other reviews | Sep 22, 2021 |

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