LEFT TO TELL - Immaculee Ilibagiza

[Chillgirl]

I read this book 3 years ago and it remains one of the most profound books I have read in my life.

In 1994 the Rwandan holocaust took place, more than one million people were murdered in 100 days. This book tells the story in her own words of survivor Immaculee Ilibagiza, who together will 7 other woman hid silently together in a cramped bathroom while being hunted down by hundreds of genocidal killers weilding machetes.

This book covers the inimaginable depth of horror and hatred but leaves you with hope and a desire for compassion and forgiveness beyond anything you would have thought possible.

I bought 6 copies and gave them to close friends, its a message I truly feel we all need to hear.

[mario]

LEFT TO TELL - Immaculee Ilibagiza

I am reading at the moment, voices from the grave by ed moloney, Its about two leading figures from oposing sides who reveal there involement in there war in N Ireland & speak frankly how there wars came to end,There opinions could not be published untill after there deaths and both died pretty young.

[sunshinedaisies]

LEFT TO TELL - Immaculee Ilibagiza

Chill - this book was amazing - I have no idea how she managed to survive it and came out the incredible young woman she is today!! I agree - a wonderful book!!

[one2many]

LEFT TO TELL - Immaculee Ilibagiza

Book sounds amazing Chilly, mist look out for it.

Mario That sounds interesting to, I might buy it for my Dad for Christmas.

I am reading... Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey. I will send it on to anyone who wants to read it once I am finished.)


This has to be one of the most entertaining, if somewhat harrowing, books I have read about childhood in a long time and I quickly devoured it in the space of 24 hours.

Reminiscent of Roddy Doyle's Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, it tells the story of a young girl growing up in Dublin, spanning the years 1964 to 1974.
Tatty, who acquired her name as an abbreviation of "tell-tale-tattler", is a lonely little girl who makes up stories to gain attention. But because she is the apple of her father's eye, this "alliance" incurs the wrath of her quick-tempered and cruel mother.
Narrated by Tatty, we get shocking but brutally honest glimpses of the unravelling marriage between her beloved but reckless father, who lives to bet on the horses, and her unhappy mother, who is suffering (undiagnosed) depression and drowning her sorrows in booze.
Caught in the middle of this maelstrom are Tatty and her five siblings, the oldest of which is mentally handicapped. When Tatty escapes to boarding school, it seems like she may be protected from the fallout of her family's disintegration, but if anything, it just makes the differences between her safe, secure life at school and the confused, disturbed one at home all that more apparent -- and difficult to deal with.
The beauty of this story is Dwyer Hickey's ability to get inside the head of a little girl. Tatty's voice is so real, so authentic you feel as if she is a living, breathing being that you long to protect.
The writing deftly treads a fine line between tragedy and comedy. It's by no means sappy or sentimental, but it is incredibly moving and, at times, tear-inducing.
I loved this book so much that when I came to the last page I felt totally bereft, not because the ending was unexpected (it wasn't), but because I had grown to know Tatty so well I feared for her future and didn't want to leave her behind.