Scholastique Mukasonga is a Rwandan writer whose work reflects on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. After she was forced to leave her homeland, and then lost 37 close family members, she remained as a survivor of the genocide. Ever since, she has been testifying about these events through her writing, including in her memoir Cockroaches (in French: Inyenzi ou les Cafards ) and her novel Our Lady of the Nile (in French: Notre-Dame du Nil ), which are discussed in this podcast episode.

Besides that, we also discuss the movie Our Lady of the Nile , directed by Atiq Rahimi from 2019, which is based on her novel and is a cooperation between two authors.

Join us in this reading, watching, experiencing and conversing so that we build our collective memory together!

This episode includes the quotes from Scholastique Mukasonga’s books which are provided by © Gallimard and Archipelago.

Those books are the following:

Mukasonga, Scholastique. 2006. Inyenzi ou les Cafards. Gallimard.

Mukasonga, Scholastique. 2012. Notre-Dame du Nil. Gallimard.

Mukasonga, Scholastique & Mauthner, Melanie (translator). 2014. Our Lady of the Nile. Archipelago.

Mukasonga, Scholastique & Stump, Jordan (translator). 2016. Cockroaches. Archipelago.