Between testimony and fiction : literary memory and the dehumanized body in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

In this dissertation, I endeavour to examine the vital role of literature as testimony in the context of post-genocide Rwanda, focusing on Philip Gureviches’ We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, Boubacar Boris Diop’s Murambi :The book of Bones, Veronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana and Abdourahman A. Waberi’s Harvest of skulls. I examine each literary text against its respective genre and highlight the importance of fiction’s role in redemptive literature to try and extrapolate how literature can be used in pre-empting future tragedy. The first chapter explores the Rwandan Genocide through the lens of Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, positioning his journalistic narrative as a form of testimony that confronts the brutality of the events and the moral failures of the international community. It examines how factual reportage can serve as a foundation for collective memory, while also grappling with the limitations of language and representation when documenting mass atrocity. The second and third chapters examine how fictional works by Boubacar Boris Diop, Véronique Tadjo, and Abdourahman A. Waberi use literature as testimony to engage with the silences, traumas, and moral ruptures left in the wake of the Rwandan Genocide. These chapters analyse how fiction not only bears witness to unspeakable violence—such as sexual violence, religious complicity, and societal breakdown—but also offers a space for reflection, post memory, and the imaginative reconstruction of collective trauma. Through close examination of all four literary works, I hope to highlight the significance of literature more specifically fiction in the face of trauma. Ultimately, this study offers insight into how all forms of literature serve as vital conduits for revealing hidden truths and reaching out to the global conscience. By bearing witness to atrocities often silenced or ignored, literature gives voice to the voiceless and opens a space where the realities of the oppressed and the traumatized can no longer be denied.