Gil Courtemanche’s debut novel, a bestseller on its publication in his native Canada, is a barely fictionalized account of Rwanda in the days leading up to the 1994 genocide perpetrated on the Tutsi minority by Hutu extremists. The book is based on Courtemanche’s own experiences as a journalist in Africa and he describes it as ‘a chronicle and an eye-witness report’. His principal characters – many based on real people – are the group of Kigali residents who congregate around the social hub of the swimming pool of the Mille-Collines Hotel. Among them are Bernard Valcourt, a disillusioned Quebecois journalist, and Gentille, a shy, beautiful waitress who is a Hutu but is often mistaken for a Tutsi. Bernard and Gentille embark on a passionate, doomed love affair as the country slides towards catastrophe.

Courtemanche sets the lives of these individuals against a vast political backdrop, including the aids crisis ravaging Africa and the savagery of the ‘structural adjustment’ imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. These issues sit awkwardly in the novel, though, and the momentous subject matter often overwhelms the personal narratives. That said, this is a moving and brave meditation on love and evil as well as a scathing indictment of an ‘international community’ inert and complicit in the face of genocide. As Bernard says, pondering how we can construct happiness among carnage and chaos: ‘If you want to keep living... you have to believe in things as plain and obvious as brothers, sisters, friends, neighbours, hope, respect, solidarity.’

Rating PW

One No, Many Yeses
A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement
by Paul Kingsnorth
(The Free Press, ISBN 0-7432-2026-9)

Whatever its proponents tell you to the contrary, the neoliberal model of economic globalization results in a net flow of capital from poor countries to rich. Since the 1970s the gap between the rich and the poor has widened dramatically and poverty and deprivation has become more widespread.

But as the neoliberals turn the screw the poor are fighting back out of necessity and with resourcefulness. In One No, Many Yeses Paul Kingsnorth travels the globe in search of the character of the movement behind the ‘anti-capitalist’ headlines and uncovers inspirational success stories along the way.

We get to see the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) taking back land for survival and self-sufficiency; guerrilla bands reconnecting electricity in South Africa; citizens making fundamental legal challenges to corporate power in the US; and the West Papua independence movement fighting to stop American mining company Freeport stripping the country of its natural resources.

Kingsnorth tracks the internationalization of these local developments from the Encuentro gathering hosted by the Zapatistas in Chiapas in 1996, through the formation of the organizing force behind the demonstrations – People’s Global Action – to the initiation of the World Social Forum. He explodes the myth that ‘the movement’ is simply against capitalism and has nothing constructive to offer in its place and he expounds the most widely held programme for change.

This gripping, highly personable travelogue is essential reading for anyone who wants to get up to speed with the growing social-justice movement.

Rating PE
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Exorcising Terror
The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet
by Ariel Dorfman
(Seven Stories Press, ISBN 1 58322 540 0)

On 16 October 1998, to the delight of millions and the fury of his unsavoury pals such as Margaret Thatcher, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London and charged with torture and murder on a warrant issued by the Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón. Ariel Dorfman, the celebrated writer and activist, has charted the historic process of the case in a short but immensely powerful book, Exorcising Terror.

Dorfman intertwines his own history – so vividly told already in his memoir, Heading South, Looking North – with a chronological account of the interminable extradition procedure. He also reflects on the meaning for Chile and the world of the unprecedented incarceration of the dictator. There are important international issues here that go far beyond the blood on Pinochet’s hands. As Dorfman points out, we are told that the march of globalization is unstoppable – so how about a globalized justice from which despots could not hide? Milosevic may be on trial in The Hague but what about Idi Amin, Mugabe or Mengistu? What about Henry Kissinger?

This book vividly captures the catharsis the trial brought to the millions of Chileans whose lives had been blighted for so long by the dictator. The pages blaze with a passionate desire to see justice for the people tortured and murdered by his vile regime. Despite the British Home Secretary’s craven decision to let Pinochet go on ‘health grounds’, Dorfman ends with a convincing argument that the process has been ‘una victoria para la humanidad’ – a victory for humanity.

Rating PW
www.sevenstories.com