A review by cocoonofbooks
An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina, Tom Zoellner

4.0

This was a hard book to read, but an important one. This 200-page book was my introduction to the details of the 1994 Rwandan genocide told through one individual's experience. Rusesabagina, whose story was told in the film Hotel Rwanda, was a hotel manager who sheltered over one thousand refugees in his hotel during the massacre by taking risks and calling in favors to the powerful people who had regularly stayed in his hotel. What is just as important as the facts of his story are his reflections on how the genocide happened. His primary audience for the books seems to be Americans (based on certain analogies he makes), and he calls out the mistaken ideas that Americans are likely to have about how a genocide attributed to "tribal factions" means a bunch of uneducated, primitive Africans fighting each other. When he explains how slowly the groundwork of hatred and fear was laid that eventually led people to kill their neighbors and friends, it's difficult not to see parallels to many other instances of racial prejudice that have started off with unchecked hateful rhetoric, including in our own country today. He also doesn't hesitate to call out the failures of other countries to lend aid, including the painful irony that once those who committed the genocide were driven out of the country as refugees, they received immense amounts of aid from the United States, who couldn't be bothered to step to aid victims in while the killing was happening.

This would be a five-star book except that events were often told out of order for no apparent reason, which made it difficult to follow at times, and there were parts of the book that were not as carefully edited as they should have been. Despite that, it's worth a read, for Rusesabagin's own story but also for the history lesson and the food for thought on human behavior.