Born in Rwanda in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced from childhood the violence and humiliation of the ethnic conflicts that shook her country. In 1960, her family was displaced to the polluted and under-developed Bugesera district of Rwanda. Mukasonga was later forced to leave the school of social work in Butare and flee to Burundi. She settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. Her first novel, Our Lady Of The Nile, won the Ahamadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize in 2012, as well as the Océans France Ô prize in 2013 and the French Voices Award in 2014; it was also shortlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2019, The Barefoot Woman was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature. In 2019, her novel Our Lady Of The Nile was adapted into a film by Atiq Rahimi. Her new novel Kibogo comes out in September.
Menu
