The Convoy: Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse in conversation with Fergal Keane

Thursday, 6 March, 7pm, Foyles, Charing Cross Road

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse will be joined by Fergal Keane, the B.B.C.’s Irish Correspondent and author of Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey. Heplayed a key role in recording her escape from Rwanda in 1994. Further information and tickets are available from the Foyles event page.

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Other events:

Tuesday March 4: Maison Française d’Oxford, 5:15pm

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse will be in conversation with Professor Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature and Fellow of All Souls College. This event is organised in collaboration with the Alliance Française d’Oxford and the Institut français du Royaume-Uni. More information and a registration link are available on the Maison Française d’Oxford website.

Wednesday March 5: University of Cambridge, 5:00pm

The author will discuss The Convoy with Dr Doyle Calhoun, Assistant Professor of Francophone Postcolonial Studies, at Peterhouse College. Space is limited, so please contact us if you would like to attend.

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About the book:

“This book is a precious thing. A telling of essential truths, an act of generosity and of courage. Out of great tragedy Beata has fashioned a testament of enduring love”
FERGAL KEANE

“An extraordinarily powerful book, a journey of memory and investigation and discovery; original, humane, and beautifully written”
PHILIPPE SANDS

“A moving and powerful account of the violence of the genocide in Rwanda and of the aftermath for the survivors. Its descriptions of the terror of the days in hiding are unforgettable”
ABDULRAZAK GURNAH, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

“The Convoy is a tour de force, giving equal weight to individual and collective experience with unparalleled clarity, dignity, and lightness of touch. But I believe that it does more, and better, than that. The Convoy represents literature at its finest from the first sentence to the last”
MOHAMED MBOUGAR SARR, winner of the Prix Goncourt

“A superb act of defiance and an unexpected gift to the world. It reclaims the right to individualise the genocide against the Tutsi and offers a powerful alternative to resilience stories”
OLIVETTE OTELE, author of African Europeans: An Untold History

“The Convoy is a genocide survivor’s determined quest to find out more details about her past. But in Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse’s gifted hands, this moving and profound book expands to become a meditation on what it means to remember and what we can still salvage from all those things that remain unknown.  It is an affirmation of love’s ability to forge new paths across terrain that hatred and violence once tried to destroy. This is a necessary book for our times.”
MAAZA MENGISTE, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize

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The author was fifteen at the height of the genocide inflicted on the Tutsi people in Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were killed in a period of only three months. The lives of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse and her mother were a sleepless nightmare – until a place was eventually found for them on a convoy to safety.

More than a decade later, after rebuilding her life in France, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was ready to begin the process of reconstructing her incomplete memories of the escape and establishing community with other survivors. She is now a poet and a prize-winning novelist, but not before this has she written about her own history. Beginning by making contact with the B.B.C. team which filmed the convoy, then by tracking down aid workers, journalists and fellow escapees and scouring archives in a search for photographs of her crossing of the border, the author pieces together records and personal accounts to try to comprehend the chaos that overtook Rwanda at the time of the genocide.

Winner of the Grand Prix de l’Héroïne Madame Figaro, the Prix Montluc Résistance et Liberté (special jury prize), the Prix France Télévisions and the Prix du Roman Métis des Lecteurs Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse in the U.K.