We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

Philip Gourevitch

1999 Winner

Guardian First Book Award

12 February 2015
9781447275268
384 pages

Synopsis

With an introduction by Rory Stewart

Winner of the Guardian First Book award, a first-hand account one of the defining outrages of modern history.

All at once, as it seemed, something we could have only imagined was upon us - and we could still only imagine it. This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.


In 1994, the Rwandan government orchestrated a campaign of extermination, in which everyone in the Hutu majority was called upon to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Close to a million people were slaughtered in a hundred days, and the rest of the world did nothing to stop it. A year later, Philip Gourevitch went to Rwanda to investigate the most unambiguous genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews.

Hailed by the Guardian as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of all time, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families is a first-hand account one of the defining outrages of modern history, an unforgettable anatomy of Rwanda's decimation. As riveting as it is moving, it is a profound reckoning with humanity's betrayal and its perseverance.

I know few books, fiction or non-fiction, as compelling as Philip Gourevitch's account of the Rwandan genocide
Like the greatest war reporters, Philip Gourevitch raises the human banner in hell's mouth . . . This volume establishes him as the peer of Michael Herr, there is no limit to what we may expect from him
Magnificent, terrifying . . . Gourevitch's account is factual, unemotional - and utterly gut-wrenching . . . The great achievement of his book is that it allows us to imagine this unimaginable crime . . . and those who stood by, human beings all