Research Catalog

The oldest orphan = L'aîné des orphelins

Title
The oldest orphan = L'aîné des orphelins / Tierno Monénembo ; translated by Monique Fleury Nagem ; with an introduction by Adele King.
Author
Monénembo, Tierno, 1947-
Publication
Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©2004.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library PQ3989.2.M58 A7613 2004Off-site

Details

Additional Authors
Nagem, Monique F., 1941-
Description
xiii, 96 pages; 24 cm
Summary
Tierno Monénembo was among the African authors invited to Rwanda after the 1994 Tutsi-Hutu massacre to "write genocide into memory." In his novel The Oldest Orphan, that is precisely what Monénembo does, to devastating effect. Powerful testimony to an unspeakable historical reality, this story is told by an adolescent on death row in a prison in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Dispassionately, almost cynically, the teenager Faustin tells his tale, alternating between his days in jail, his adventures wandering the countryside after his parents and most of the people of his village have been massacred, and his escapades as a cheerful hoodlum in the streets of Kigali. Only slowly does the full horror of his parents' death and his own experience return to Faustin. His realization strikes the reader with shattering force, for it carries in its wake the impossible but inescapable questions presented by such a murderous episode of history and such a crippling experience for a child, a people, and a nation.
Uniform Title
Aîné des orphelins. English
Alternative Title
  • Aîné des orphelins.
  • Aîné des orphelins
Subject
  • 1994
  • Genocide > Rwanda > Fiction
  • Rwandan Genocide, Rwanda, 1994 > Fiction
  • Political atrocities > Rwanda > Fiction
  • Genocide
  • Political atrocities
  • Völkermord
  • Rwanda > History > Civil War, 1994 > Fiction
  • Rwanda
  • Rwanda > Bürgerkrieg
Genre/Form
  • Fiction
  • History
  • Fiction.
  • Romans.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
  • 0803232241
  • 9780803232242
  • 0803282850
  • 9780803282858
LCCN
2003009666
OCLC
  • ocm52153953
  • 52153953
  • SCSB-9475231
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library