As snow falls outside his home in the Jura mountains, the Swiss former aid worker David Hohl - tells an old school friend how he witnessed the massacres in Kigali. A young idealist, David arrives in Rwanda in 1990 to work for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. He finds a life of postcolonial privilege and boredom, inhabited by expats who know little about Rwandans and cannot be bothered to learn the local language. Relief from boredom comes with civil war, David watches with excitement as troops march through Kigali; Agathe, the cosmopolitan Rwandan woman he has haplessly been courting, finally succumbs to his advances. But who is Agathe? Is she a Europeanised student, a daughter of African farmers, locked in an eternal struggle with nature, or is she a militant Hutu inciting murder from the back of a flatbed truck? And what is David's own role in the genocide?
One Hundred Days
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Review
One Hundred Days is written in the spare, distilled language that befits its task, never sensational and never squeamish... It is an unflinchingly political novel that brings across its devastating message without making any narrative compromises - "Times Literary Supplement"
[A] harrowing portrayal of organised slaughter... it explores the existential dilemmas that come with being Swiss - a more interesting topic than you might imagine... Magnificent - "Glasgow Herald"
His writing is seriously good, dramatising horrific events in illuminating ways -" Independent"
[A] harrowing portrayal of organised slaughter... it explores the existential dilemmas that come with being Swiss - a more interesting topic than you might imagine... Magnificent - "Glasgow Herald"
His writing is seriously good, dramatising horrific events in illuminating ways -" Independent"
About the Author
Lukas Barfuss, born in Thun, Switzerland in 1971, is one of the most successful dramatists to emerge in recent years, and his plays are staged all over the world. Barfuss was voted playwright of the year in the critic poll featured by the magazine "Theater heute" in 2005. Barfuss was awarded the Mara-Cassens Prize, the Schiller Prize and the Erich-Maria-Remarque-Friedenspreis Prize for One Hundred Days. He was also nominated for the German and Swiss Book Prize.
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Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I purchased this book during the twelve days of Kindle just because it sounded interesting and was cheap. What a gem.
It is about the genocide in Rwanda but more to the point when wanting to do good turns out you actually not only made it worse but with your "tools" you allowed killing on a grand scale. And once you accepted your guilt is it therefore allowed to go with the flow, fraternise with killers to get even with another killer and to save your life. Can guilt become so strong that you give up on your idealism and trade with corrupt men in order to visit a corrupted) woman because you think her understanding will bring you the sense of "you are forgiven, it was not you, it was the country"? And how do you live with guilt and shame for the rest of your life?
On top of it, it is political and investigates the dark side of a society based on strict order and how easily it can flip over from giving security to hell.
Dont expect background on what happened, the reader is expected to know that or look it up. However you get a rough picture.
And during each step "David" takes you, ask yourself: "What would I have done in his shoes."
It is about the genocide in Rwanda but more to the point when wanting to do good turns out you actually not only made it worse but with your "tools" you allowed killing on a grand scale. And once you accepted your guilt is it therefore allowed to go with the flow, fraternise with killers to get even with another killer and to save your life. Can guilt become so strong that you give up on your idealism and trade with corrupt men in order to visit a corrupted) woman because you think her understanding will bring you the sense of "you are forgiven, it was not you, it was the country"? And how do you live with guilt and shame for the rest of your life?
On top of it, it is political and investigates the dark side of a society based on strict order and how easily it can flip over from giving security to hell.
Dont expect background on what happened, the reader is expected to know that or look it up. However you get a rough picture.
And during each step "David" takes you, ask yourself: "What would I have done in his shoes."
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