This is a book about humanity at its very worst and how an ordinary man can affect us with the power of words. In Rwanda in 1994, Hutus murdered 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, in 100 days - a rate of more than five lives per minute. To be shot rather than be dismembered by machete before your screaming family was a mercy.
Paul Rusesabagina saved the lives of 1,268 people by giving them sanctuary in the luxury hotel where he was manager, while keeping murderous soldiers at bay, relying on a phone and his extensive contacts book to call in favours. The same gift of the gab that a good hotel manager deploys to schmooze an irate guest complaining about draughts made the difference between life and death; he cajoled and coaxed, flattered and deceived, lied and bribed. He used charm to disarm. 'I am convinced that the only thing that saved those 1,268 people in my hotel was words,' recalls the unassuming man justifiably compared with Oskar Schindler.
Rusesabagina's story was told in the film Hotel Rwanda, but cinemagoers were not shown the importance of his upbringing in a village where disputes were settled over a banana beer, nor the example of Rwandan hospitality set by his father: 'If a man can keep a fierce lion under his roof, why can he not shelter a fellow human being?' Nor did the movie quite convey Rusesabagina's anger at the failings of Kofi Annan and the United Nations, which he believes did more harm than good by allowing the world to think that something was being done.
The story is told in a direct, unadorned style reminiscent of the African oral tradition. The humility and humanity that Rusesabagina showed during the fastest genocide in history also make him a first-class memoirist. He notes how, in the hotel built for only 300 people, Hutu and Tutsi strangers, many of whom had witnessed their families being butchered, would 'sleep spoon-style just to feel the touch of another'. And he wrestles with that final enigma: how is it that a colonel who has spent his day hacking women and children to death can sit down for a civilised conversation with a hotel manager over a glass of beer? Read this noble, insightful book and you might begin to glimpse the answer.
