THE CONVOY

Prize winning novelist and short story writer Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse s harrowing urgent memoir documents and reconstructs her escape at the age of fifteen from the Rwandan massacres of 1994 in which 800 000 Tutsi were slaughtered Finalist for the Prix Du Livre Inter 2024 A non fiction book which must be recognised as a major work of literature for here along with the extreme violence and the story of survival in a time of horrors is a hitherto unrecorded truth Nathalie Crom Télérama A gripping story at once a personal account and a reflection on the indelible traces of genocide Sophie Rosemont Vogue France Bare bones deeply moving and crucial Olivier Mony Livres Hebdo A powerful indictment of cowardice in the face of cruelty Nelly Kaprièlian Self Times Literary Supplement On the 18th of June 1994 weeks before the end of the massacres in which hundreds of thousands of her fellow Tutsi Rwanda s Bantu speaking ethnic group were slaughtered by the Hutu Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her mother were fortunate to find a safe passage out of Rwanda with a convoy of children organised by a Swiss humanitarian organisation Fifteen years later after rebuilding her life and becoming a successful novelist Mairesse is ready to begin the long pro