Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Oldest Orphan

The Oldest Orphan

King, Adele
Nagem, Monique Fleury
Monénembo, Tierno

Paperback

Historical FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $15.00

ISBN10: 0803282850
ISBN13: 9780803282858
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: Mar 1 2004
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.80
Language: English
Tierno Monénembo was among the African authors invited to Rwanda after the 1994 Tutsi-Hutu massacre to write genocide into memory. In his novel The Oldest Orphan, that is precisely what Monénembo does, to devastating effect. Powerful testimony to an unspeakable historical reality, this story is told by an adolescent on death row in a prison in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Dispassionately, almost cynically, the teenager Faustin tells his tale, alternating between his days in jail, his adventures wandering the countryside after his parents and most of the people of his village have been massacred, and his escapades as a cheerful hoodlum in the streets of Kigali. Only slowly does the full horror of his parents' death and his own experience return to Faustin. His realization strikes the reader with shattering force, for it carries in its wake the impossible but inescapable questions presented by such a murderous episode of history and such a crippling experience for a child, a people, and a nation.

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