“Young Philip Gourevitch brings us a report from the killing fields of Africa that marks him as a major successor to the handful of great correspondents who have risked life and safety to bring dark truths to a world reluctant to know of them. Like the greatest war reporters, he raises the human banner in hell’s mouth, the insignia of common sense, of quiet moral authority, of blessed humor. He has the mind of a scholar along with the observative capacity of a good novelist, and he writes like an angel. This volume establishes him as the peer of Michael Herr, Ryszard Kapuscinski, and Tobias Wolff. I think there is no limit to what we may expect of him.”
—Robert Stone
“Remarkable …ardent and authoritative …Gourevitch stands alone in his ability to combine an impassioned and informed account of the Rwandan catastrophe with a meditation about what can only be called its spiritual significance.”
—David Rieff, The New Republic
“A milestone of foreign reporting and a chronicle of evil rarely rivaled since Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness … [Gourevitch’s] compelling account should be required reading.”
—Jonathan Randal, The Washington Post Book World
“Stunning …After reading this unforgettable book, it is impossible ever to feel the same again about societies, about human beings, about oneself.”
—Ronald Steel
“Gourevitch’s book ranks among the best examples of the journalism of moral witness.”
—Lance Morrow, Time
“Riveting.”
—Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Wall Street Journal
“A devastating analysis of the makings of genocide, of the inhuman horrors that can spring from political manipulation and perverted mythology. Gourevitch’s book is also a strong indictment of the aloofness, wrong-headedness, and pusillanimity of the so-called great powers, and the international organizations they lead, when dealing with genocide in a small country far away.”
—Sir Brian Urquhart
“Shocking and important … clear and balanced … the voice in this book is meticulous and humane.”
—Michael Pearson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Astonishing … [Gourevitch] is masterful at placing the unspeakability of mass murder into actual peoples’ mouths and inhabiting it in actual peoples’ stories.”
—Mark Gevisser, Newsday
“A harsh but elegant moral reckoning.”
—The New Yorker
“Thoughtful, beautifully written, and important …we want to pass it along to our friends, and to insist that they read it because the information it contains seems so profoundly essential.”
—Francine Prose, Elle
“Extraordinary …rich …Gourevitch is a morally serious writer, and he’s at his very best when listening to ordinary Rwandans, especially the survivors, and trying to make sense of their stories. These voices haunt the book, and they haunt the reader afterward.”
—George Packer, The Nation
“Literary journalism at its very best.”
—John Corry, The American Spectator
“[An] amazing chronicle … We Wish to Inform You takes the unimaginable and renders it disturbingly, unavoidably real. For that reason alone, this book should be widely read.”
—Michael Maren, The Village Voice Literary Supplement