‘Literature in focus’: 
from the Land of the Thousand Hills to Lake Geneva

Mathilde Fontanet and Odette Habiyakare. (@Photo Bianco)

This book is the result of a meeting of two women. In 1994 Odette lived through the genocide in Rwanda, in which she lost most of her family. She wanted to record her account of the events and asked Mathilde to set them down in writing for her. Odette tells us not only of persecution, terror and atrocities but also of the happy days before the massacres, of the warmth of family life, of celebrations under the stars, of herds of cattle in the hills and of her well-regimented life at boarding school in Kigali, where the girls all wore well-pressed blouses and had names straight out of Balzac. Mathilde listens, reacts and responds with an account of her own contrasting memories of life in Geneva. Whether she is telling us about the non-religious Christmases of her youth, a child’s feelings of humiliation, encounters that have enriched her life or the experience of grieving, she speaks of the joys and traumas that make up life’s tapestry with a poignancy that reveals an acute sensitivity. It is this shared emotion which forms the link between the stories of these two women, one from Rwanda and the other from Geneva.

Mathilde Fontanet is a member of CERN’s Translation and Minutes Service. Her novel Rabenstrasse 5 was published by Editions Metropolis in 2005. Mathilde Fontanet and Odette Habiyakare will present "Sous les étoiles du Rwanda" as part of the "Literature in Focus" series.

Mathilde Fontanet and Odette Habiyakare

Sous les étoiles du Rwanda

Thursday, 18 October at 4 p.m. in the CERN Central Library

Tea will be served.