Small Country: An African Childhood

Gael Faye's book was awarded the Goncourt high school students prize . It depicts a lost paradise ,or the childhood's harrowing end during three years (roughly 1992-1994) ; the first part is the (relatively) happy times of the young hero: there're already cracks in the mirror; Gaby is the son of a white French building contractor and his black wife , whose family is still living in Rwanda : for Xmas ,she left her children to call on them ,and their children suffer accordingly . Gaby leads a wild life with his friends , but he's a serious pupil at school where the teacher talks about democracy . In 1993 , the elections saw a Hutu president rise to power ,and the Tutsis ( dominating ethnicity ) are not prepared to accept it ; on October,the 21th ,the coup d' etat (in the army, the Tutsis were in the majority )sparks off the civil war between the ethnicities and the massacres. The fateful day is treated in admirably succint style: gunshots, then the desert street of the village ,and the father (a restrained Jean-Paul Rouve) desperately turning the buttons of his radio ,getting no news. The horrible massacres are seen through a child's eye ,and apart from the horrifying lynching (the man beaten up ,then burned in a car), they are suggested :when the car ,passes through dead bodies , the children are told :"close your eyes" ; the viewer may be lost in the politics ,and he feels all the more in a child's shoes ; the awful fate of his parents is treated with decency .The genocide in Rwanda is represented by the black and white photography of Pacifique's wedding ("he was killed by his brothers in arms").