The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide

"In the spring of 1994, the tiny African nation of Rwanda exploded onto the international media stage as internal strife reached genocidal proportions. But the horror that unfolded before our eyes had been building for years before it captured the attention of the world. Journalist and Africa scholar Gérard Prunier offers an up-to-date historical perspective that Western readers need in order to fathom how the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass. With a new chapter bringing its analysis up to the present, The Rwanda Crisis probes how the genocidal events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic, a plan that served central political and economic interests, rather than a result of primordial tribal hatreds, a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize the fighting" -- Book cover