Book Spotlight: An Ordinary Man

Rusesabagina, Paul (2006) An Ordinary Man, New York: Penguin Group.

I remember watching the evening news in the spring 1994 and wondering 1) What was happening in Rwanda? 2) How could this happen? and 3) Why wasn’t anything being done to stop the slaughter? This book, at least, attempts to answer some of those questions. Paul Rusesabagina was the manager of a luxury hotel in the capital of Rwanda. He was a Hutu, and when the slaughter of the Tutsis began, protected more than 1200 of them in his hotel. He called in all favors owed him, bribed, reasoned, and somehow prevented the slaughter of those in his care. The movie, Hotel Rwanda, is based upon his experiences. Over 800,000 Tutsis were killed in a three month period. From his perspective, with the 1200 he rescued, he only stopped the killing for four hours. This book was recently received at the Orem library along with a book called Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher Browning. While I have not read it yet, it asks the questions of how seemingly good and ordinary men could have been cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews during WWII. While both books deal with ordinary men, the choices each make determines whether they are heroes or villains.
Review by Karen Newmeyer, Orem Campus Librarian