Running the Rift
Naomi Benaron
to be released January 17, 2012
360 pages (in the ARC that I read, which Dawn so kindly passed on to me)
Published by Algonquin
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Note: This book won the Bellwether Prize, which is awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice. Previous winners include The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow (which I will be reading soon, thanks to Kari) and Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (which I have already read and adore). I didn’t know unpublished novels could even win prizes.
Another note: This won’t be published until January, and I should probably wait until then to post this, but good grief, that’s next year! I don’t want to have a post hanging out there in scheduled-to-be-published land for 2 months!
Publisher’s overview:
Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a ten-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions. Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it’s impossible to stay apolitical—where the man who used to sell you gifts for your family now spews hatred, where the girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refuses to look at you, where your Hutu coach is secretly training the very soldiers who will hunt down your family.
Yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda’s first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence. When the killing begins, Jean Patrick is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life.
I’ve never read any fiction set in Rwanda. Actually, I’ve never read any non-fiction set in Rwanda, either. Heck, I haven’t even seen the movie Hotel Rwanda. However, I was aware of the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic tensions and the resulting genocide that resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands Rwandans. This book does a fabulous (a weird word to use when talking about a book about genocide) job of bringing a small piece of that terrible time to life.
Jean Patrick tries to keep himself apart from politics and the Hutu-Tutsi divide. All he wants to do is go to school and run in the Olympics. But as the tensions escalate, he finds it very difficult to keep himself apart. Especially when he falls in love with a woman who comes from a very outspoken family. Jean Patrick is certainly no hero…he is willing to hide his identity so that he can run, and he makes some ambiguous moral choices. However, he’s far from a bad guy. I’d say he’s just an ordinary kid forced to do what he’s gotta do to survive.
Anyhoosie. Good book, people…you should check it out when it comes out. Next year.
How bizarre that unpublished novels can win prizes! I think I have this one…somewhere… if only I knew where….
You mean you don’t have a color coded map of all the books in your house?
Bizarre indeed about the unpublished and the winning. Maybe it should be renamed the Kingsolver is Important and Can Give Awards to Unpublished Novels Award.
That’s an excellent name. You should suggest a name change. I double dog dare ya.
I had no idea unpublished books could win awards either. Interesting!
How do they even get submitted??
I saw this one on Net Galley (I think) and it interested me, but I had too many books at the time so I didn’t request it. It’s not a book that I would normally pick up on my own but I was thinking about book club…
I think it would make for an interesting book club read.
I get frustrated by my huge pile of books that have not published yet. I don’t have the luxury of reading them NOW and publishing the review in three months. Requires some planning.
And that’s my problem…I don’t want to have to plan.
Man, Algonquin’s really piling up the Bellwethers. I’m glad you enjoyed this but I have to say…I’m a little…I dunno, suspicious, maybe?…of reading fiction that features such a detailed and complex conflict of a country and/or its people by an author that isn’t from or have a connection to that place setting. How well can an author describe the subtleties of a conflict without any personal connection to it? Just a topic for conversation…
I had that thought, too. Evidently, she has some connection, but I’m not sure exactly what.
She made multiple trips there over the last several years, and she’s really active in working with the Rwandan refugee community in our hometown–in fact, she has a family that she’s befriended and has helped find jobs, not to mention sometimes looking after their kids.
I didn’t know that’s what this book is about. Vance has a friend from Rwanda, so I am always interested in that country.
I had never even heard of this book before, much less that it won a prize! It sounds like a literary powerhouse, and something that I would like to read. I am glad you enjoyed it. Awesome and very enticing review!
I have read a few books on the Hutu-Tutsi situation and found them painful and interesting (also a word word to use for such a topic but you know what I mean
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I definitely knew that unpublished books can win awards. That’s the only way a book can win the Bellweather. Hill, you’re such a tease about this book! It’s already on my tbr list.
You are a tease! This sounds like it’ll be an amazing book.
I didn’t know about awards for unpublished books either! Sounds like this one lives up to it’s award.
MY AUNT! We’re all so so proud. We’ve been reading her stuff for years and cheering her own as she fought the long, slow struggle for recognition…and now this. Unbelievable. I think I’m going to be literally buying copies and handing them out to people.