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michaelontheplanet 's review for:
Our Lady of the Nile
by Scholastique Mukasonga
Hutu you do: from the author of Cockroaches, a Black Narcissus of the post-colonial era as the select lycée for the future wives and mothers of Rwanda’s elite becomes a greenhouse of prejudice, hatred and violence. Gloriosa, politician-in-the-making, tries on adult mores for size and, abetted by a weak-willed priest, creates mayhem in a closed community, turning friends and classmates against each other. There’s savage humour in all this division - the decapitation of the Virgin Mary with her “Tutsi nose” makes a satirical case against both religion and race as entirely fabricated dividers of humanity - and Gloriosa lives up to her ironic nomenclature as she sows fear and frenzy, so her comeuppance though realistic is satisfying. Scholastique Mukasonga allows some hope for the future as Tutsi Virginia parts from her Hutu rescuer Imaculée, but mainly there’s a feeling of foreboding about what is to come, set as it is some years before genocodal mania descended. Taut, sleek and devastating.