Scholastique
Mukasonga

Born in Rwanda, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced from childhood the violence and humiliation of the ethnic conflicts that shook her country. In 1960, her family was displaced to the polluted and under-developed Bugesera district of Rwanda. She settled in France in 1992, only 2 years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. In the aftermath, Mukasonga learned that 27 of her family members had been massacred. Her autobiographical account Inyenzi ou les Cafards, marked Mukasonga’s entry into literature.

Her first novel Our Lady of the Nile, won the Ahamadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize, as well as the Océans France Ô prize and the French Voices Award.