This book documented a cataclysmic event that the world had all but ignored: the Rwandan genocide. It is a gripping read, full of outsize characters – notably, a hotelier who evokes the Bogart character in Casablanca – and passages with raw emotional power.

It is a bit one-sided in the telling. Tutsi leader Paul Kagame emerges as an unqualified hero when his actual record has been more ambiguous. But most of the author’s forays into political and historical context are incisive and add to a story that is profoundly enlightening, about the realities of African politics, ethnic cleansing, and outside intervention. It becomes clear that the international community, at first, actually provided inadvertent aid to those carrying out the genocide.