Book details
Machete Season
The Killers in Rwanda Speak
Author: A report by Jean Hatzfeld; Translated by Linda Coverdale; Preface by Susan Sontag
Machete Season
$12.99
About This Book
Book Details
Navigate the darkest corridors of humanity with Machete Season–a harrowing saga that dusts off the grim truths of the Rwandan Genocide.
Rewind to April-May 1994, as the Tutsis face the unimaginable horror of annihilation under their fellow Hutu's brutal reign. The author, Jean Hatzfeld, painstakingly pieces together the chilling accounts shared by nine Hutu executioners. Recounted are not just tales of horror, but a frightening display of the dehumanizing banality of evil.
This revelation doubles as a probing exploration of the mechanisms of mass murders and their remorseless orchestrators. Delve into their candid confessions about the dreadful slaughter of approximately 50,000 Tutsis, their neighbors. As you navigate through their stories, one piercing, unsettling theme stands out: “Killing is easier than farming." Echoes of their unsettling ambivalence towards their heinous actions fill the pages, raising alarming questions about human morality and ethics.
Machete Season isn’t just a chronicle of genocide. It's an insightful contemplation on the extraordinary horrors that ordinary human beings are capable of under certain circumstances. By starkly positioning the Rwandan Genocide alongside historical war crimes and genocidal episodes, this book raises a mirror to the darkest corners of human nature, forcing you to reconsider the pylons of morality, humanity, and guilt when survival is at stake.
Imprint Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN
9781429923514
In The News
“An extraordinary book. Jean Hatzfeld's interviews in Machete Season shed a glaring light on the multiple yet similar faces of ordinary executioners in the genocides of our time.” —Saul Friedländer
“Hatzfeld's harrowing documentation of the voices of Rwandan killers reminds us once again how perfectly human it can be to be perfectly inhumane.” —Philip Gourevitch