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“In this moving memoir, Irankunda recalls living through a 13-year civil war that upended his life in Burundi when he was only 4 years old and contemplates the loss of his country’s culture and tradition to the violence.”—The New York Times

 

Pacifique Irankunda was born in Burundi, a small country in East Africa bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania, and Congo. He came to America at the age of nineteen as a scholarship student at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts.

 

“Civil wars bring out the worst in us, for they set neighbors and friends against one another. Yet from a childhood lived in that terrible shadow, Pacifique Irankunda has brought forth a finely wrought memoir and a moving meditation on wisdom and justice.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars