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sydsnot71 's review for:
Our Lady of the Nile
by Scholastique Mukasonga
This is the second Scholastique Mukasonga book I've read, but the first fiction. The other book I'd read was 'The Barefoot Woman', which is non-fiction. There is, having done a little digging, an element of auto-fiction in this novel, but I'm not sure how much.
It is set in an all girls Catholic school in Rwanda in the 1980s where the children of the ruling classes - or the want to be ruling classes - send their daughters. With a view to making them the perfect fodder for strategic marriages: "Thanks to their daughters, these families will grow wealthy, the power of their clans will be strengthened. and the influence of the lineage will spread far and wide. The young ladies of Our Lady of the Nile know just how much they are worth."
It is really a series of interconnected incidents, almost short stories, pulled together into an over all narrative. There is a tension that builds as Tutsi/Hutu rivalry is played out and, through the machinations of Gloriosa - a Hutu and the daughter of a government official - lies and builds up hostility to the Tutsi's at the school that ends with rape, murder and escape.
Veronica and Virginia are the two Tutsi students and there's an outside chance that Virginia is Mukasonga's alter ego as Mukasonga was forced to leave her school in the 1970s. The book is really their story. They are - mostly - the centre of events even as Gloriosa who is a pretty two-dimensional bully. However, perhaps all bullies are two-dimensional.
Veronica gets exoticized and fetishized by Monsieur de Fontenaille, a Belgian artist and colonial hangover, but he can't save her from, well, horror.
The book is, despite its serious themes, quite funny at points. Father Herménégilde, the school chaplin, and resident Catholic sex pest is acidly drawn: " And the same minister sent a consignment of white shirts to replace the old yellow ones. They were practically transparent, which Father Herménégilde seemed to appreciate, despite the reticence he displayed before Mother Superior."
It is pretty scathing about the Catholic nuns, colonialism, Rwandan politics and politicians which they probably all deserve. The colonialists in this case are the Belgians and the way history is taught in the school gets a fine kicking: "Africa had no history, because Africans could neither read or write before the missionaries opened their schools. Besides, it was Europeans who had discovered Africa and dropped it into history."
A fine book. A kind of Lord of Flies, but in an school rather than on an island. Schools in literature are often terrible places full of bullies and sneaks, but in this case the bullies can get you killed.
Worth a read.
It is set in an all girls Catholic school in Rwanda in the 1980s where the children of the ruling classes - or the want to be ruling classes - send their daughters. With a view to making them the perfect fodder for strategic marriages: "Thanks to their daughters, these families will grow wealthy, the power of their clans will be strengthened. and the influence of the lineage will spread far and wide. The young ladies of Our Lady of the Nile know just how much they are worth."
It is really a series of interconnected incidents, almost short stories, pulled together into an over all narrative. There is a tension that builds as Tutsi/Hutu rivalry is played out and, through the machinations of Gloriosa - a Hutu and the daughter of a government official - lies and builds up hostility to the Tutsi's at the school that ends with rape, murder and escape.
Veronica and Virginia are the two Tutsi students and there's an outside chance that Virginia is Mukasonga's alter ego as Mukasonga was forced to leave her school in the 1970s. The book is really their story. They are - mostly - the centre of events even as Gloriosa who is a pretty two-dimensional bully. However, perhaps all bullies are two-dimensional.
Veronica gets exoticized and fetishized by Monsieur de Fontenaille, a Belgian artist and colonial hangover, but he can't save her from, well, horror.
The book is, despite its serious themes, quite funny at points. Father Herménégilde, the school chaplin, and resident Catholic sex pest is acidly drawn: " And the same minister sent a consignment of white shirts to replace the old yellow ones. They were practically transparent, which Father Herménégilde seemed to appreciate, despite the reticence he displayed before Mother Superior."
It is pretty scathing about the Catholic nuns, colonialism, Rwandan politics and politicians which they probably all deserve. The colonialists in this case are the Belgians and the way history is taught in the school gets a fine kicking: "Africa had no history, because Africans could neither read or write before the missionaries opened their schools. Besides, it was Europeans who had discovered Africa and dropped it into history."
A fine book. A kind of Lord of Flies, but in an school rather than on an island. Schools in literature are often terrible places full of bullies and sneaks, but in this case the bullies can get you killed.
Worth a read.