Our Lady Of The Nile

Despite Mother Superior whispering, ‘We’re so close to heaven,’ in a calm and collected convent high up in the misty Rwandan hills, a student, Gloriosa, a Hutu with an influential father, finds the nose of the Virgin Mary statue offensive. It is the nose of a Tutsi, she announces. Ethnic enmities begin to make themselves known…

A haunting book with shafts of light, comedy and a deft touch, Our Lady of the Nile is set in a convent school in Rwanda just before the genocide. Taut and written with simplicity and beauty, Scholastique Mukasonga’s writing has an eye for satire that will leave the reader wondering long after she has closed the book.