October
Shake Hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire
On
the tenth anniversary of the date that UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda,
Random House Canada is proud to publish the unforgettable first-hand
account of the genocide by the man who led the UN mission. Digging deep
into shattering memories, General Dallaire has written a powerful story
of betrayal, naïveté, racism and international politics. His message
is simple and undeniable: "Never again."
When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire received the call to serve as force
commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in 1993, he thought he was
heading off on a modest and straightforward peacekeeping mission.
Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned
and suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in only
a hundred days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes the reader with
him on a return voyage into the hell of Rwanda, vividly recreating the
events the international community turned its back on. This book is an
unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the
genocide, despite timely warnings.
Woven through the story of this disastrous mission is Dallaire's own
journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to
retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of
peace, reconciliation and hope. This book is General Dallaire's personal
account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth and secure in
his assumptions to a man conscious of his own weaknesses and failures
and critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily
with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what
happened to General Dallaire and his mission to Rwanda is crucial to
understanding the moral minefields our peacekeepers are forced to
negotiate when we ask them to step into the world's dirty wars.
November
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ,winner of the 2009 Booker
Prize
In
the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to
gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of
political power
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies
without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry
VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn.
The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's
freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves
a power vacuum.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly
original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist,
astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate
politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition.
But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps
him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made
society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their
fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters,
overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal
and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings
unlimited power but a single failure means death.
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