Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

I discuss the novel, Murambi, The Book of Bones, by playwright, Boubacar Boris Drop. The novel is set four years after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The objective of this paper is to argue the need for consistent telling and re-telling of the events of this particularly mass atrocity in order to define a sensitive and refined understanding of mass killing. As digital and social media increasingly show new atrocities in real time, I argue that we need to return to the detail of past genocides or part thereof, to develop a fuller and nuanced understanding of writing about mass atrocity. The method of presentation is a literary textual analysis of Diop’s novel. My theoretical framework hinges on Bachelard’s theory of space and David Simpson’s discussion of the stranger. In this paper, a portion of my dissertation, I focus on the foreigner and his inside and outside role in narrative fiction as a literary tool to further develop a theme for understanding and writing about mass atrocity. Crucially, and this is a finding in this paper, an appraisal of this particular novel is important to understanding both the theory of the novel and the theory of theatre so that we continue to sensitively interpret and write about unspeakable human atrocity in a creative and truthful manner. This novel is also a fine example of the successful interplay of historical and fiction genres. The site of this interplay is where our understanding of genocide develops most profoundly.