In conversation with Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
Photograph of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse by Céleste Nieszawer © Flammarion
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Butare in Rwanda in 1979. She was fifteen when she survived the genocide against the Tutsi. She settled in France and has become a writer. Her first novel All Your Children, Scattered (awarded the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie) and Consolée, her second (winner of the Prix Kourouma), were applauded both by critics and by booksellers.
She will converse with Catriona Seth (All Souls College) and present 'The Convoy' (Translated from the French by Ruth Driver) at 5.15pm on 4 March at the Maison Française.
Please note that copies of 'The Convoy' will be available for sale
This event is organised in collaboration with the Alliance Française d'Oxford and the Institut français du Royaume-Uni.
To attend, please register here.
About 'The Convoy'
The author was fifteen at the height of the genocide inflicted on the Tutsi people in Rwanda. She and her mother had spent weeks moving from one insecure shelter to another amid scenes of petrifying violence. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were killed in a period of only three months.
The lives of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her mother were a sleepless nightmare – until, eventually, a place was eventually found for them on a convoy to safety.
More than a decade later, after rebuilding her life in France, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was ready to begin the process of reconstructing her incomplete memories of the escape and establishing community with other survivors. She is now a poet and a prize-winning novelist, but until now she never written about her own history.
Beginning by making contact with the BBC team which filmed the convoy, then by tracking down aid workers, journalists and fellow escapees and scouring archives in a search for photographs of her crossing of the border, the author pieces together records and personal accounts to try to comprehend the chaos that overtook Rwanda at the time of the genocide.
