...this is is a book that demanded to be written, not only to mark the lives lost in Burundi and Rwanda, but also to show the way in which violence can take hold of a nation ... captures the physical, social, sensual and political reality of Burundi as seen through the eyes of a boy who wants to maintain his innocence.
...[a] standard coming-of-age material, until, in an escalation of the feud between the country’s majority Hutu and minority Tutsi populations, the president is assassinated, sparking civil war and – across the border in Rwanda – genocide ... But a narrator with limited insight should be more than simply a problem to work around...Faye seems to squander the dramatic potential that a child’s point of view might bring ... This sharp shock of a novel implies that, amid terrifying social breakdown, innocence isn’t easily claimed, as the narrator’s memories turn confessional and he becomes a participant in the violence.
The Tutsi-Hutu violence, the notion of identity to a biracial child, and the impossible choices of those living in troubled territories are all explored in a straightforward style befitting a young narrator. ...presents a world where there are no easy demarcations of good and evil, sane and insane, or pure and corrupted ... capturing the full impact of social and political disintegration.
The mass killings that took place in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 form the core of Gaël Faye’s Small Country, a miraculous story of before and after, of innocence shattered and of surviving the transformation of paradise into hell ... The end of childhood, the demands of family and the coming of war, all seen through the eyes of a young person, are told simply and soulfully in under 200 pages.
In wry and quick strokes, this dialogue captures a young boy’s ernest inquiry and a father’s ironic but not altogether dishonest attempt to explain the origins of the Rwandan genocide. The father's answer is a formidable combination of humor and threat, at once a punch line and a reckoning of implausible violence, a nuanced complexity that is a distinguishing feature of Gaël Faye’s prose in his debut novel, Small Country.
Faye's debut tells the story of Gabriel, a preteen boy in mid-1990s Burundi when violence from the Rwandan genocide spills over the border ... and when the killing that was kept at arm’s length comes to their street, Gabriel loses almost everything. ... Though the situation is rich, it does not become so until about midway through the book ... Faye provides an interesting window into Burundi and a reminder of the specious logic and horrific cost of treating others like vermin.
Eleven-year-old Gabriel has a peaceful, mischievous childhood marred only by the growing rift between his French father and Rwandan mother. Gabriel’s mother crosses the border to seek news of her Tutsi family and returns traumatized; Gabriel retreats into voracious reading as his friends get involved with guerrilla warfare...The most powerful moments come as Gabriel stumbles through processing his alarming new realities with delayed understanding. The juxtaposition of everyday growing pains and the fallout from atrocities is heightened by Faye’s...prose, which builds a heartrending portrait of the end of childhood.
