While the month is winding down, Reading the World this year for the EWN will drag into at least June as I still have a few more titles to get to for sure, still plan on tackling some of the stories from the latest issue of Absinthe, and still have another panel in the works - with folks like Chad Post of Dalkey Archive and Jill Schoolman of Archipelago Books - however, this was a pretty busy month for them as well.
In the meantime though, here is a review of a book that is actually on this year's list of suggested titles.
Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld, Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
2005 FSG, 2006 Picador 253 pages
“Man can get used to killing, if he kills on and on. He can even become a beast without noticing it. Some threatened one another when they had no ore Tutsis under the machete. In their faces, you could see the need to kill.”
The above comes from Alphonse, a Hutu. He is one of a dozen or so prisoners that Jean Hatzfeld interviews while putting together this book on the killing aspect of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Hatzfeld had earlier written a similar book having interviewed Tutsi survivors, and looking at it from their point of view.
The truly frightening aspect of Machete Season comes from that first line in the quote from Alphonse. While one might think that it would take a certain type of man to participate in the daily slaughter of neighbors and friends – to the tune of about 50,000 out of 59,000 such individuals – some bloodthirsty, even crazy, individuals. Hatzfeld’s book shows this to not really be the case.
Hatzfeld intermingles sections of his own commentary – often bringing into the picture his own experiences having witnessed war in Croatia and Bosnia, not to mention other genocides such as that during World War II – with sections on a single topic, with interview responses from a group of young men who were involved in the mass killings of Tutsis.
The section headings alone let the reader know that Hatzfeld does not let these prisoners off with a bunch of easy questions. For example: Punishment, Looting, Women, In Search of the Just, And God in All This?, and he just goes on. While asking these questions, Hatzfeld also comments throughout in his own sections about the various tendencies by each of the men he is interviewing – one may truly try to explain his actions, while another always lies to begin his response, and then slowly tries to refine that lie to something that might be deemed acceptable by one outside his circle.
One aspect that allows for some question as to whether or not each normal man would jump to be a part of this killing as Alphonse suggests, is the fact that the bulk of the prisoners Hatzfeld interviews were friends from childhood. It lends to the idea that mob mentality may have infiltrated into the willingness of those who participated just a bit as well.
Either way, Hatzfeld’s book is right up there with 2005’s other big interview styled non-fiction, Voices From Chernobyl, in terms of the power and importance it wields. And Hatzfeld’s own intermingling of thoughts based on his years of experience and journalism only add to the effect. Search this one out.
4.5 stars
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