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Jean Hatzfeld. Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005/Picador, 2006. Translated by Linda Coverdale. Preface by Susan Sontag. xiv + 253 pp. Maps. Chronology of Events. Photograph. Index. $24.00. Cloth. $14.00. Paper.
The provocative title of French journalist Jean Hatzfeld's book, Machete Season, now in English translation, evokes a key point Hatzfeld makes about the Rwandan genocide-that it was an "agricultural" genocide (70), born of the same instruments the killers had used to harvest their fields. The only difference in 1994 is that the crops were human.
The book is a fascinating read. The group of ten men Hatzfeld interviewed come from the same region as the genocide survivors he interviewed for an earlier book, Dans le nu de la vie: récits des marais rwandais (Paris: Seuil, 2000). As with his previous book, Hatzfeld organizes Machete Season by alternating descriptive chapters-about the region of Bugesera, the political history of Rwanda, and other topics-with the killers' own words. In this way, he sets the stage for the their remarks...