Doing the 197

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch (1998) Read 9 February 2026 - 26 February 2026 So, quite apart from the 1994 Rwandan genocide being the bleakest topic imaginable, this might be considered an illogical place to begin. I don't want to fall into the trap of viewing the countries I read about, particularly African ones, as solely defined by atrocities, still less through the eyes of western writers, and by journalists rather than historians at that! It’s just as well then that this is a very well-written book, brimming with righteous indignation and gripping personal testimonies from the author’s travels to corpse-strewn Rwanda from 1995 onwards. I first picked it up because of the title, which I know now came from a letter signed by seven Tutsi pastors to Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the church leader who had convinced them to seek refuge at the Mugonero complex. Ntakirutimana, a Hutu, then transported arme...

This is a project in which I aim to read a history book for every country in the world. The book can be either a general history of the country or just focus on an aspect or aspects of that country (events, gender relations, culture phenomena etc etc) within a specific timeframe. I am doing this mainly so I can i. learn things ii. say I've done this and, as a distant iii., improve my quizzing performances.  I expect that this is an impossible task, not least because i. the books don't exist (is there a readable standalone history of Palau? I doubt it) or are unavailable in English/otherwise inaccessible and ii. if I tick off 10 nations a year that's still 20 years of reading. I really am primarily charting this here as a record for my own benefit. Nonetheless, if you know of an excellent work for a specific country please let me know via the accompanying Bluesky thread !  An initial online search indicated that, inevitably, other people have attempted similar 'challenge...