Heartbreaking and powerful, this slim novel packs a powerful punch. It was an enlightening read about a horrific time. I am familiar with Rwanda and the genocide that happened there in the nineties but I was unfamiliar with the neighboring country of Burundi and the violence that erupted there around the same time. It's a coming of age story about a young boy who see the world changing around his very eyes and tries to make sense of the senseless violence. I can summarize it any more beautifully than the author: "Every day in our world, we hear the terms “migrants” and “refugees,” but we forget that behind these words, there are names, dreams, and voices. This novel is a long poem about one of those kids, from a distant conflict, who finds his own words to tell his name and his story. And I hope also that the readers can discover Burundi because this is one of the first novels to talk about this small and relatively unknown country."
