A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali edition by Gil Courtemanche Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali edition by Gil Courtemanche Literature Fiction eBooks 
“Look, for people who’re going to be dead soon, we’re not doing too badly.”
“The novel of the year” is what La Presse called this extraordinary book, a love story that takes place in the days leading up to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A first work of fiction by one of French Canada’s most admired journalists, Gil Courtemanche, it was first published in Quebec in 2000, spent more than a year on bestseller lists and won the Prix des Libraires, the booksellers’ award for outstanding book of the year. Rights were sold to publishers in over twenty countries in Europe and around the world. This humanist story of an unlikely love affair set against a holocaust has become an internationally acclaimed phenomenon, worthy of comparison with the work of Graham Greene and Albert Camus.
The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel, Kigali, in the early 1990s, draws a regular crowd of assorted aid workers, strutting Rwandan officials, Belgian businessmen, French paratroops and Canadian expats. Among them is Bernard Valcourt, a documentary filmmaker from Quebec, on a mission to set up a television station in the capital. Valcourt, who for two decades has earned his living from wars and famines, lingers around the pool drinking warm beer and watching football; but most of all, watching Gentille, a beautiful young waitress, who is a Hutu but often mistaken for a Tutsi because of her family’s strange history.
The trouble coming stems from a long conflict, instigated in colonial times by Whites who treated Tutsis as superior to Hutus. The Hutu government is now openly encouraging violence against Tutsis. The physical traits of the Tutsis make them easy prey, but they are not the only ones in danger. Too many people are already dying in Rwanda daily of AIDS, of malaria, and increasingly at roadblocks at the hands of drunken militia, or pulled from their homes. The hotel staff and prostitutes sense trouble and death drawing closer as they continue providing drinks and meals and sex.
The story of this developing catastrophe is revealed through the lives of a handful of Rwandans who befriend Valcourt. They confide in him because he listens, and because his interviews offer them a chance to try to change the way things are by telling the world. Their candour and warmth begin to make his heart glow. He meets people like Méthode, who knows a bloodbath is brewing and would rather die of AIDS in the comfort of a hotel room than by a machete. Threatened, frightened, sick, they don’t want to talk and act like they’re dying. Poor as they are, they want to have some moments of pleasure and celebrate life.
As Kigali life continues in its resourcefulness and persistence, Valcourt is falling in love with Rwanda, and with Gentille, who loves him because he sees her as no-one has seen her before. Even as the worst horrors begin, as friends are raped and murdered, he starts to feel a strange peace in this land of a thousand hills, though he repudiates the outside world for its failure to intervene. Because Gentille is thought to be Tutsi, her life is in danger. Still, no-one can believe that the extremists will go too far, that brothers and sisters will kill brothers and sisters, and that 800,000 civilians will be massacred.
A hard-hitting chronicle of an overlooked chapter of recent history, told with skill and compassion, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is also a celebration of living in the moment, of the integrity of friendship and the courage of everyday heroes. Harrowing, unsettling, challenging, but beautiful and moving, it is a book that cannot leave the reader untouched; as a Quill & Quire reviewer said, it is “full of real people that demand to be remembered.”
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali edition by Gil Courtemanche Literature Fiction eBooks
This book gives you great insight into the kindness and humanity in Rwanda in 1994 that was intermingled with the brutality and hatred and meanness. The love story is poignant and painful in outcome. Understanding genocide is not an easy process and perhaps in some ways it is beyond understanding. I recommend this to those of you who feel looking back is important to understanding the future. We do work in Rwanda each year and love the people and communities very much. Like the people there we have only hope for their future for they have worked at healing and it continues.Product details
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A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali edition by Gil Courtemanche Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Montreal author Gil Courtemanche dives right in, elbows deep, into the Rwandan genocide of 1994. As such, this is not an easy novel to read.
Necessarily, it is filled with barbaric violence, committed on a wide scale, mainly in face-to-face encounters with machetes, knives and clubs. The novel also depicts a number of graphic, horrifying accounts of the sexual violence which accompanied the genocide, and no doubt this too belongs in this novel.
Courtemanche, however, takes an artistic stand toward love (and sex) and death, which again, considering the subject matter, is probably appropriate, although at times, particularly the protracted death of Gentille, hovers above a strange nexus. Would a woman undergoing a sexual assault think the thoughts that Courtemanche places in her head? I don’t know; the subjective fixation of this novel, its keen eye on the existential issues of sex and death and violence, preclude an easy answer. But many times it seems the author is off the mark and well into the domain of gratuitous expression. Women are treated as bodies to either love or abuse.
This is an unsettling novel, written in an odd register, with concerns and fixations that are both mundane and odd. At times it reads like an extended political book, with long speeches, at others, it is painfully naturalistic. The result is mixed, not extremely satisfying, and off-kilter.
For only the 2nd time in my avid reading years have I abandoned a book midway through. I had such high hopes for this book as the premise intrigued me. It’s a fictional story based on the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I enjoy learning about other cultures and historical events through works of fiction and I thought this book would provide such enjoyment.
While there is the element of the genocide and cultural issues, I could not continue to read it because of the extreme sexual explicitness. Part of the culture issue of Rwanda at the time was the rampant spread of AIDS. I don’t mind the author exposing readers to this. It needs to be known but the reader doesn’t have to be exposed to the detailed sexual acts of the characters who have AIDS. Regardless of my convictions, such elements in a book that is intended to make readers aware of genocide atrocities and the AIDS epidemic, there is absolutely no need for such explicit details. Not that I prefer it in other books, but there are authors who write sexually explicit genre insomuch the reader expects it. I was most disappointed to experience this in a book that doesn’t market to that genre.
What little I read, I did appreciate the historical events, the cultural experience and the political corruption that is exposed during this horrific event. And maybe further in the book the sexual explicitness tapers off but I had already given myself “just a little more” but even then the sexual explicitness continued to re-appear. I just couldn’t continue any further. The explicit details overshadowed the awareness that is much needed.
Love the book! Came in perfect condition and was a great read for school! Thank you for quick shipping!
Required reading for English.
Although this piece of literature is hard to "stomach" it is very well written and highly readable. have to admit that it took me a long, long time to finish -- probably because of the content. -- but I DID persevere. It was worth the effort. I have spent enough time in the southern countries of Africa to recognise the absolute truth of this narrative. What is so incomprehensible to us in North America is that these conditions and attitudes are common, will not be changed (probably ever), and are doomed to be repeated all over that continent from now on. Yet, my heart yearns to be there, to do whatever little I can to help.
"A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali" is a sad and haunting novel about two improbable lovers -- a weary Canadian journalist and a young Rwandan barmaid -- who try to claim their ration of happiness in a country riddled with AIDS and teetering on the brink of genocide. The writing is spare, full of menace, and wonderfully evocative of Africa. The description of oversexed and overprivileged expatriates battening on "development" contracts is deadly accurate. The story has a lot of Rwandan history and politics, but it never feels didactic or weighted down with scholarly detail. Overall, the book is a minor gem, and I took off one star only because of occasional scenes where the author overreaches in an effort to achieve grotesque comic or melodramatic effect. (I can't describe the scenes because of 's prudish rules about review content -- but any reader of the book will know what I'm talking about.)
This book gives you great insight into the kindness and humanity in Rwanda in 1994 that was intermingled with the brutality and hatred and meanness. The love story is poignant and painful in outcome. Understanding genocide is not an easy process and perhaps in some ways it is beyond understanding. I recommend this to those of you who feel looking back is important to understanding the future. We do work in Rwanda each year and love the people and communities very much. Like the people there we have only hope for their future for they have worked at healing and it continues.
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