In April-May 1994, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by their Hutu fellow citizens--about 10,000 a day, mostly being hacked to death by machete. InMachete Season, the veteran foreign correspondent Jean Hatzfeld reports on the results of his interviews with nine of the Hutu killers. They were all friends who came from a single region where they helped to kill 50,000 out of their 59,000 Tutsi neighbors, and all of them are now in prison, some awaiting execution. It is usually presumed that killers will not tell the truth about their brutal actions, but Hatzfeld elicited extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they had perpetrated. He rightly sees that their account raises as many questions as it answers. Adabert, Alphonse, Ignace, and the others (most of them farmers) told Hatzfeld how the work was given to them, what they thought about it, how they did it, and what their responses were to the bloodbath. "Killing is easier than farming," one says. "I got into it, no problem," says another. Each describes what it was like the first time he killed someone, what he felt like when he killed a mother and child, how he reacted when he killed a cordial acquaintance, how 'cutting' a person with a machete differed from 'cutting' a calf or a sugarcane. And they had plenty of time to tell Hatzfeld, too, about whether and why they had reconsidered their motives, their moral responsibility, their guilt, remorse, or indifference to the crimes. Hatzfeld's meditation on the banal, horrific testimony of the genocidaires and what it means is lucid, humane, and wise: he relates the Rwanda horror to war crimes and to other genocidal episodes in human history. Especially since the Holocaust, it has been conventional to presume that only depraved and monstrous evil incarnate could perpetrate such crimes, but it may be, he suggests, that such actions are within the realm of ordinary human conduct. To read this disturbing, enlightening and very brave book is to consider in a new light the foundation of human morality and ethics. Jean Hatzfeld, an international reporter forLiberationsince 1973, is the author of many books, including another on Rwanda,Into the Quick Life, and two on the war in Croatia and Bosnia. He lives in Paris. Linda Coverdale, the translator ofMachete Season, has translated more than forty books, including Tahar Ben Jelloun'sThis Blinding Absence of Light, which won the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Brooklyn. Susan Sontagwrote several novels, stories, plays, and essays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work; in 2003, she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Sontag died in December of 2004. AWashington PostBest Book of the Year Coming in paperback in April 2006 The genocidal massacre of almost a million people in Rwanda more than a decade ago may be fading into history, but the killers are with us still, and so is the moral problem of trying to understand how such terrible crimes could have been committed. Jean Hatzfeld's astonishing account of conversations he had with some of the killers, now convicted and in jailmen who had rampaged across the fields, singing as they went, hacking to death 50,000 out of 59,000 of their neighborsoffers extraordinary insights into the nature of this collective crime. But, as Hatzfeld understands, the killers' words raised as many questions as they answer. The ten men Hatzfeld interviewed had been friends from childhood; they stayed together during their genocidal "job," as they called it, an

Jean Hatzfeld, an international reporter for LibTration since 1973, is the author of many books, including an earlier one on Rwanda and two on the war in Croatia and Bosnia.

Preface	vii
Maps	ix
Chronology of Events in Rwanda and Especially in Nyamata	xi
EARLY MORNING	3	(7)
HOW IT WAS ORGANIZED	10	(7)
THE THREE HILLS	17	(4)
THE FIRST TIME	21	(7)
A GANG	28	(8)
APPRENTICESHIP	36	(5)
GROUP SPIRIT	41	(6)
TASTE AND DISTASTE	47	(5)
GOING INTO ACTION	52	(8)
FIELD WORK	60	(6)
A NEIGHBORHOOD GENOCIDE	66	(5)
PUNISHMENT	71	(6)
SOME THOUGHTS ON CORRUGATED METAL	77	(5)
LOOTING	82	(6)
A SEALED CHAMBER	88	(5)
REJOICING IN THE VILLAGE	93	(5)
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ESCAPE NETWORKS	98	(10)
WOMEN	108	(6)
IN SEARCH OF THE JUST	114	(5)
ACQUAINTANCES	119	(6)
PENITENTIARY WALLS	125	(4)
SUFFERING	129	(6)
GUYS IN GOOD SHAPE	135	(5)
AND GOD IN ALL THIS?	140	(8)
IN THE SHADE OF AN ACACIA	148	(9)
REMORSE AND REGRETS	157	(8)
JOSEPH-DESIRE BITERO	165	(11)
THE ORGANIZERS	176	(7)
BEHIND THE MUDUGUDUS	183	(7)
LIFE GOES ON	190	(5)
BARGAINING FOR FORGIVENESS	195	(7)
PARDONS	202	(6)
A NOBLE BEARING	208	(8)
HATRED OF THE TUTSIS	216	(6)
AN UNNATURAL SLAUGHTER	222	(4)
WORDS TO AVOID SAYING IT	226	(9)
DEATH IN THE EYE OF A KILLER	235	(10)
The Killers	245

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