In the late 1990s, French author and
journalist Jean Hatzfeld made several journeys into the hilly, marshy
region of the Bugesera, one of the areas most devastated by the Rwandan
genocide of April 1994, where an average of five out of six Tutsis were
hacked to death with machete and spear by their Hutu neighbors and
militiamen. In the villages of Nyamata and N'tarama, Hatzfeld
interviewed fourteen survivors of the genocide, from orphan teenage
farmers to the local social worker. For years the survivors had lived in
a muteness as enigmatic as the silence of those who survived the Nazi
concentration camps. In Life Laid Bare, they speak for those who are no
longer alive to speak for themselves; they tell of the deaths of family
and friends in the churches and marshes to which they fled, and they
attempt to account for the reasons behind the Tutsi extermination. For
many of the survivors "life has broken down," while for others, it has
"stopped," and still others say that it "absolutely must go on."

These
horrific accounts of life at the very edge contrast with Hatzfeld's own
sensitive and vivid descriptions of Rwanda's villages and countryside
in peacetime. These voices of courage and resilience exemplify the
indomitable human spirit, and they remind us of our own moral
responsibility to bear witness to these atrocities and to never forget
what can come to pass again. Winner of the Prix France Culture and the
Prix Pierre Mille, Life Laid Bare allows us, in the author's own words,
"to draw as close as we can get to the Rwandan genocide."