Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Running the Rift

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Imagine that a man who was once friendly suddenly spewed hatred. That a girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refused to look at you. That your coach secretly trained soldiers who would hunt down your family. Jean Patrick Nkuba is a gifted Tutsi boy who dreams of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medal contender in track. When the killing begins, he is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life. Spanning ten years during which a small nation was undone by ethnic tension and Africa's worst genocide in modern times, this novel explores the causes and effects of Rwanda's great tragedy from Nkuba's point of view. His struggles teach us that the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit can keep us going and ultimately lead to triumph.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jean Patrick is a Tutsi being groomed by a Hutu coach to run for Rwanda in the Olympics. His times are good, but his timing is not. In 1994 the Hutu massacre 800,000 Tutsi. Once embraced by the president, our hero finds himself hiding in a banana tree while the Hutu below debate killing him with a grenade. Actor Marcel Davis also has much ground to cover. He must give voice to old men and young women, to the killers and the killed. While Davis does not create auditory identities for each character, it's always clear who's shrieking. The moral: Fictional differences between one person and another can justify violence too horrible to believe. Here one melodious voice can speak for us all. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 26, 2011
      Set in the years leading up to the Rwanda genocide, Benaron’s Bellweather Prize–winning debut novel follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, “the jewel in Rwanda’s crown,” a Tutsi boy with a gift for running. Jean Patrick dreams of representing Rwanda in the Olympics, but must contend with abject poverty, an ethnic quota system, and savage bullying. He runs Olympic-qualifying times, moving closer to his dreams as tensions rise between the governing Hutus and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Force), a Tutsi-led rebel army. Jean Patrick gains the favor of the president, but falls in love with a journalism student participating in antigovernment activism, and finds himself entangled in a vast and calamitous game of political chess. “Something unimaginable is coming,” warns his brother, a rebel soldier, and when the long-smoldering tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis erupt into a hellish conflagration, Jean Patrick must run away from the country he has spent his life running for. Benaron accomplishes the improbable feat of wringing genuine loveliness from unspeakable horror. She renders friendships and families with tenderness and sincerity, and lingers on the goodwill that binds a fractious community, even as those tethers grow taut and, finally, snap. She regards even the genocidaires with clear-eyed charity, allowing moral complexity to color the perversity of their deeds. It is a testament to Benaron’s skill that a novel about genocide—about neighbors and friends savagely turning on one another—conveys so profoundly the joys of family, friendship, and community. This powerful novel recounts inhumanity on a scale scarcely imaginable, yet rebukes its nihilism, countering unforgivable violence with small mercies and unyielding hope.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 26, 2012
      Set during the 1980s and ’90s, Benaron’s novel follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, an aspiring Olympic runner from Rwanda, as he struggles with the burdens of life in his home country and the growing conflict between Tutsi and Hutu people, which escalates and eventually leads to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Narrator Marcel Davis produces a passable Rwandan accent; it is lilting and precise, but cuts in and out during dialogue. Davis narrates the rest of the book in an American accent. And while his reading is clear and well paced, this disparity only adds to the awkwardness of his attempt to capture the sound and rhythm of Rwandan speech and in the end undermines his performance. An Algonquin hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Funding for additional materials was made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.