Author(s): Scholastique Mukasonga

Biography & Memoir

It was while we were weeding the sorghum field that Mama taught me most of her memories of the Rwanda that used to be. Alas! I've forgotten so many of thesecrets Stefania told me, the secrets a mother tells only her daughter.

From the author of the critically acclaimed novel Our Lady of the Nile, ahaunting, delicately wrought work of non-fiction, memorialising a lost childhood,community and way of life.

When Scholastique Mukasonga's family are killed in the genocide of the Tutsisby the Hutus in Rwanda, she is unable to fulfil her mother Stefania's wishto shroud her body with pagne. So instead, she now weaves her mother'sshroud with words, drawing on inherited traditions of storytelling to offer adevastating, unforgettable tribute.

In beautiful, lucid prose, Mukasonga lays before us the fierce courage andstrength of her mother as she fought for her children's safety, her family's exileto the Burundi border and her community's efforts to maintain ritual andtradition. Vivid, evocative and deeply moving, this is a remarkable work of artand act of love.

'A powerful work of witness and memorial, a loving act of reconstruction,and an unflinching reckoning.' - Zadie Smith