Our Lady of the Nile

Posted on 17 June 2017 by Scholastique Mukasonga

For her most recent work and first novel Notre Dame du Nil, originally published in March 2012 with Gallimard in French Mukasonga immerses us in a school for young girls, called Notre Dame du Nil The girls are sent to this high school perched on the ridge of the Nile in order to become the feminine elite of the country and to escape the dangers of the outside world The book is a prelude to the Rwandan genocide and unfolds behind the closed doors of the school, in the interminable rainy season Friendships, desires, hatred, political fights, incitation to racial violence, persecutions The school soon becomes a fascinating existential microcosm of the true 1970s Rwanda. Read Our Lady of the Nile Author Scholastique Mukasonga – kino-fada.fr There is no better lycee than Our Lady of the Nile Nor is there any higher We re so close to heaven, whispers Mother Superior The school year coincides with the rainy season, so the lycee is often wrapped in clouds Sometimes, not often, the sun peaks through and you can see as far as the big lake, that shiny blue puddle down in the valley It s a girls lycee The boys stay down in the capital The reason for building the lycee so high up was to protect the girls, by keeping them far There is no better lycee than Our Lady of the Nile Nor is there any higher We re so close to heaven, whispers Mother Superior The school year coincides with the rainy season, so the lycee is often wrapped in clouds Sometimes, not often, the sun peaks through and you can see as far as the big lake, that shiny blue puddle down in the valley It s a girls lycee The boys stay down in the...A story of a Catholic girls school in the mountains of Rwanda, set apart from society but not protected from the racial tensions that lead up to the genocide The conflicts between Tutsi and Hutu have always existed, and at the time this novel is set, the Belgian government has attempted to mandate mixing by requiring a certain percentage of Tutsi girls to be at the school But they are not treated the same, at least not by the others.Other issues are raised, such as the idealization of the Tuts A story of a Catholic girls school in the mountains of Rwanda, set apart from society but not protected from the racial tensions that lead up to the genocide The conflicts between Tutsi and Hutu have always existed, and at the time this novel is set, the Belgian government has attempted to mandate mixing by requiring a certain percentage of Tutsi girls to be at the school But they are not treated the same, at least not by the others.Other issues are raised, such as the idealization of the Tutsi female by white men, confusing expectations of morality between men and women, and how far r...Bringing a surprisingly light touch to the material, Mukasonga investigates the disasters of Rwandan history, building from the colonial period and culminating in the internal strife of genocide in 1994, in the microcosm of an all girls Catholic school in the 80s And so ominous political undercurrents are just one thread running beneath a web of other stories misplaced veneration of old colonial powers, Rwandan folklore lurking at the fringes of official Christianity, ...I try really hard to keep up with what happens in the world, but sometimes it is difficult to understand what happens in a foreign county, a foreign culture and the horrific devastation of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda is no exception Sure, I remember the news and yes I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, but still it... Also available on the WondrousBooks blog. 3.5 stars This book is just what I needed to remind me why I decided to follow the reading around the world challenge It s such a good profile of the situation in Rwanda for the time period and even much after as the book is set before the 1994 Tutsi genocide , that I couldn t help but feel carried away into the world of the book.Our Lady of the Nile delves deeply into the psychology of the regular Rwandans, depicting their beliefs, the struggl Also available on the WondrousBooks blog. 3.5 stars This book is just what I needed to remind me why I decided to follow the reading around the world challenge It s such a good profile of the situation in Rwanda for the time period and even much...I ve always thought that choosing a good topic was a important skill for non fiction writers And implicitly, at least, I ve thought the same thing for novelists and poets I m much less likely to read books that just mull over the same material Well, Mukasonga chose a topic that s both very appealing to me nunsploitation and objectively worthwhile colonialism, politics, their awful effects on each other But I feel uncomfortable saying that this counts in the book s favor Mukasonga, I gat I ve always thought that choosing a good topic was a important skill for non fiction writers And implicitly, at least, I ve thought the same thing for novelists and poets I m much less likely to read books that just mull over the same material Well, Mukasonga chose a topic that s both very appealing to me nunsploitation and objectively worthwhile colonialism, politics, their awful effects on each other But I feel uncomfortable saying that this counts in the book s favor Mukasonga, I gather, lives in France in exile from Rwanda, which she fled due to the 1997 genocide there Her previous works have been autobiographies incomprehensibly, they haven t been translated So it s not like she chose her topic A...This is a short yet somewhat dense novel set in an elite Rwandan girls boarding school in the 1970s set well before the genocide but written after, it focuses primarily on the laying of the groundwork for ethnic cleansing As a novel, though, it didn t do anything for me the structure isa series of vignettes than a plot there is no protagonist, and almost all of the girls seem either interchangeable or too distant to inspire any sense of connection in readers The most vivid personalit This is a short yet somewhat dense novel set in an elite Rwandan girls boarding school in the 1970s set well before the genocide but written after, it focuses primarily on the laying of the groundwork for ethnic cleansing As a novel, though, it didn t do anything for me the structure isa series of vignettes than a plot there is no protagonist, and almost all of the girls seem either interchangeable or too distant to inspire any sense of connection in readers The most vivid personality is Gloriosa, who leads the persecution of her Tutsi classmates, but she s too caricatured and two dimensional to be interesting, let alone sympathetic And for all that in real life the teenage years are a time of intense emotion, the girls interactions and relationships are almost entirely driven by politicking and a...I had big plans for this novel, first five stars, then four, but by the end of it my plans degenerated down to three I really wanted to give this novel minimum four, but near the end of Our Lady of the Nile the story became choppy Whereas the majority of the story was like a mansion, the end tuned into a lean to tacked on I don t know what happened to this interesting and lyrical novel It s as if the author didn t know where to take the story or just got tired and rushed the story to its fi I had big plans for this novel, first five stars, then four, but by the end of it my plans degenerated down to three I really w...It s the late 1970s in Rwanda, and the students at Our Lady of the Nile an elite girls boarding school know to watch their step The country is under majority rule, but unrest is everywhere the minority ethnic group make easy scapegoats Genocide is not yet here, and it will not be here for some time, not really But everyone knows that it s only a matter of time.It s an odd book, perhaps Fascinating, though For much of the book very little actually happens instead it is all scene set It s the late 1970s in Rwanda, and the s...The book is set inside of the Catholic boarding school for girls in Rwanda some time before the main events of the horrific genocide, when the tragedy is already in the air It is a fable about coming of age, human nature and the limits of evil and good.I do not know much about Rwanda, unfortunately And certainly, after reading this short novel I would like to find outWhat affected me the most is how history repeats itself in different times and in different settings, how under the influ The book is set inside of the Catholic boarding school for girls in Rwanda some time before the main events of the horrific genocide, when the tragedy is already in the air It is a fable about coming of age, human nature and the limits of evil and good.I do not know much about Rwanda, unfortunately And certainly, after reading this short novel I would like to find outWhat affected me the most is how history repeats itself in different times and in different settings, how under the influence of the toxic ideology, taken to the extreme and instigated by authority, be it religion, the one of the isms, or even democracy, people forget what makes them human and satisfy the savagery impulses through violence against the others who are different It has happened on a massive scale Russia, China, Balkans, Middle East It has happened there in that little countryBut the novel is not dark it is full of hope, african ...

English
17 June 2017

Scholastique Mukasonga