An Ordinary Man
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Average rating4.5
'I still don't understand why those men in the militias didn't just put a bullet in my head and execute every last person in the rooms upstairs but they didn't. I survived to tell the story, along with those I sheltered. There was nothing particularly heroic about it...' Paul Rusesabagina was an ordinary man – a quiet manager of a luxury hotel in Rwanda. But on 6 April 1994 mobs with machetes turned into cold-blooded murderers, and commenced a slaughter of 800,000 civilians in just 100 days. Rusesabagina, with incredible courage, saved the lives of 1,200 people. In this powerfully moving autobiography Rusesabagina tells his story and explores the complexity of Rwanda's history and the insanity that turned neighbours and friends into killers.
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I will never understand how an entire race can come together to exterminate another. However, I can understand how people become monsters when they listen to hate. This is a powerful memoir of a hotel manager who saved over 1,200 Tutsi refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Paul Rusesabagina does not write this memoir as a savior of hero, but as an ordinary person. This book is heartbreaking, and it shows how the world turned its back on Rwanda. This is the book that inspired the movie, “Hotel Rwanda”.
