Volume 52, Number 9 · May 26, 2005
Sorrows of a Hero
By Guy Lawson
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
by Roméo Dallaire, with a foreword by Samantha Power
Carroll and Graf, 562 pp.,$30.00; $16.95 (paper)
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda is the memoir of Roméo Dallaire, the United Nations force commander in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. A Canadian lieutenant general, Dallaire and his tiny contingent of blue berets created havens in hotels and churches and saved the lives of as many as 25,000 people during the one hundred days of the killings. But in a disaster that nearly beggars belief, Dallaire's United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) was forced to stand helplessly aside as innocent Tutsi trapped inside the country were set upon by Hutu extremists.[1] Shake Hands with the Devil, published a decade after the genocide and a number-one best seller last year in Canada, in both English- and French-language editions, is the testimony of a soldier still burning with fury at what he watched unfold before his eyes.
Review, 5497 words
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